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L 



IFE IN TARIS 



P 



Letters on Art, Literature and Society 



BY 



ARSENE HOUSSAYE 




R. WORTHINGTON, 750 Broadway. 
1879. 







O. PUBLIC LIBIWW- 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

The New Play by Sardon — The Celebrities of the "First 
Night " — Rival Dinner Parties — Social Dissipation . 5 

Venus from Astronomical and Social Points of View — The 
Gods of Olympus in Dress Coats — A Member of the Acad- 
emy of Sciences who wanted to bring Venus to terms — 
American Women representing the Classical Style of 
Beauty 17 

Parisian gossip about Count Von Amim and Newspapers — 
Actresses and Duchesses — Death of Charles Coligny . 26 

The Carnival in Full Blast — The New Opera House Man on 
Lescaut and Mademoiselle Bernhardt — An Invasion of 
Gypsies 35 

New Year Festivities — The Queen of Spain and her Parisian 
Palace — Deaths and Dancers — Politicians on Ice . . 45 

An Apologue of M. Thiers — The Offended Fairy — The 
Spartan Club — Gen. Read's Album — AmeriQan Beauty in 
the Opera House — The Royalty of Fashion . . -55 

Stormy Weather — Parisian Precocity — The Salon of a Prin- 
cess — The Grave of a Great Artist 65 

The Opera Question — The Tvnlight of Gamier — Wit of 
Women in the Dark — Necrology of the Week and Diges- 
tion of the Lord Mayor 76 

A Soldier's Ball-Room Talk — The Romance of a Waltz — 
Terpsichorean Aphorisms — The Height of the Season — A 
Persian Parable . . 85 

At the Opera Ball — The Follies of an Evening — What Peo- 
ple talk about to Strauss Music . . . . . 96 



4 Contents. 

PAGE 

A Week of Events — Dinner Talk at M. Thiers's — Reception 
of Alexandre Dumas at the Academy — M. Houssaye's 
Masked Ball — Marriage of Henry Houssaye — New Art 
Publications io8 

The Ethics of Flirtation — The Three Dead Painters, Millet, 
Chintreuil, and Corot — The Romance of a Servant Girl's 
Portrait — M. Houssaye's Venetian Fete — A Truce of Poli- 
tics in Society . . . . . . . .116 

Ardent Actresses — A Wife's Vengeance — A Cossack Princess 
— Olga De Janina — Kite Flying in Paris — M, De Roths- 
child's Little Joke 127 

A Day at Longchamps — The New and the Old Pilgrimages 
— Edgar Quiuet — Historian and Poet — Amedee Achard — 
A Pious Duellist .138 

The American and the French View of Life — Houses, Hos- 
telries, and Tombs — The way Newspapers are made in 
France — Personals of Figaro — Savants and Horses — A 
Surprise Party ........ 147 

A Voyage in the Air — Victor Hugo's Rock — M. Thiers's 
Birthday — The Chinese in Nature and the Chinese in Fire- 
screens — Spindles and Gilded Paunches — The Vase of 
Fortuny and the Vase of Clovis — Two Weddings — Mr. 
Washbume's Quadrille 156 

A Chinese Slander on Gentlemen — The Idleness of Princes 
— The Count of Paris and his History of the Civil War in 
America — An Historian Painter — The Three Festivities of 
Yesterday — Paradise and Paradise Lost . . . .167 

The Exposition of 1875 — Proudhon — An Escaped Lunatic — 
The Results of Philosophy — Socialist Principles — Marriage 
and Divorce — Socrates and Xantippe .... 192 

The Academy Duel — Lemoinne and Paradol — The Academy 
a Political Institution — The Two Dumas — An Exotic 
Princess — Eloise and Abelard — A Radical Architect . 202 

A Future Senator — Alphonse Esquiros — Poet and Politician 
— Condemned to Death — Working the Oracle — Legitimism 
— the Sleeping Beauty — Who is Prince Charming . . 212 



LIFE IN PARIS. 




THE NEW PLAY BY SARDOU THE CELEBRITIES 

OF THE "first NIGHT " RIVAL DINNER PAR- 
TIES — SOCIAL DISSIPATION. 

Paris, Dec. 8, 1874. 

To the Athe7iians and the Atheniennes of the 'New 
World, Greeting: 

HAT I know least about is my begin- 
ing," says the poet when he begins 
to speak of the human heart. I am 
Hke the poet. I also vault over the official pre- 
sentation. Have I not already left you my card 
in the form of a Romance, which you have 
probably never read, but which you may have 
glanced at, so as to have the privilege of speak- 
ing ill of it ? And you were right, Madame ! 
The romances in action at Paris or New York 
are the only ones worthy of your curiosity. 
The romance which you love is that which you 
write yourself in your heart. I migjht abuse your 



6 Life in Paris. 

indulgence by beginning with a preface, but I am 
too much a man of the world to be a pedant ; 
I suppress the rising of the curtain, to give you 
at once the true comedy. 

It is the Comedy of Paris, where you already 
play your part by virtue of your millions, Mon- 
sieur — by virtue of your beauty, Madame. Which 
is the cleverer, millions or beauty? 

To view rightly the Parisian Comedy, one 
needs the American eye, and perhaps I shall 
have the advantages of it. I have in my neigh- 
borhood a Philadelphia or Washington lady (not 
to dot my i's too exactly), whom I meet every- 
where, even at home, although she is usually 
everywhere else, in her rage for seeing every- 
thing. She will denounce those masks where I 
have not been able to penetrate the secrets of 
the passions of the last quarter of an hour. Do 
not ask me the name of your compatriot. As, 
at a masked ball, she will tell me for your bene- 
fit a thousand and one stories caught here and 
there ; but if her mask is lifted, she will say 
no more. She would content herself with that 
diplomatic language of women, who speak only 



Life in Paris. 7 

to disguise their thoughts. Ask the ingenues oi 
the Theatre Franfais if it is not so. I merely 
tell you that your compatriot has the dazzling 
beauty of women at thirty years, for she is still 
ripening on the wall, worthy the plucking of 
Monsieur de Balzac ; but let one last sunbeam 
come, and she will attain the declining beauty 
of " memories and regrets." 

In speaking of the diplomatic language, I 
must preserve a clever speech of Madame Henry 
de Pene at the first representation of La Haine. 
Some one said to her, pointing out with her fan 
the box of a Foreign Minister, " He has perfect- 
ly the air of a diplomatist, which proves," she 
said, " that he is a bad diplomatist." And, in 
truth, the true diplomatist is the one who seems 
to see nothing, and understands nothing. M. de 
Talleyrand always had an absent-minded air. 
They thought him absent, but he was always at 
home. As for Monsieur de Metternich, he 
always said " I don't understand." He under- 
stood before any one spoke. 

The young Princess de Metternich has the 
same talent of her father-in-law, all which did 



L. 



8 Life in Paris. 

not save either Austria or France, her second 
fatherland. For you know that she persists in 
breathing the air of the Champs Elysees, like 
the Princess Mathilde, who said to me that 
brilliant evening of La Haine. "This horrible 
Paris, how I love it ! " Permission was given to 
the Princess to make a tour of the world in 1870, 
but M. Theirs, who knew her well, gave her to un- 
derstand that the gates of Paris were open to her. 
For many women, Paris is their native air. 
The moment they leave it they are homesick. 
It is because Paris excites a fever of the spirit 
and the heart, like coffee. Out of Paris you 
find that the clock of time goes too slow. A 
strange mania to wish to live in the whirlwind ! 
But, after all, it is not wisdom — for philosophers 
become mad in solitude ? Who was it that said, 
" For lovers the earth revolves in heaven, for 
others it revolves in the void ? " Well, for the 
provincials of all the provinces of the Old World 
the earth revolves in ennui, while for the Parisi- 
ans it revolves in the passions, love or wit, pride 
or money, art or luxury. Oh, Erasmus, where art 
thou ? 



Life in Paris, 9 

Another Parisian, par excellence^ is his Excel- 
lency Commander Nigra. He says, like Marshal 
MacMahon, '■^fysuls^fy resterai." " I am here, 
I shall stay here." He was greatly amused at La 
LTaine, in learning from the historian Sardou the 
history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Nigra 
is a serious historian, besides being a poet and 
a satirist. La Haine is destitute of gayety. It 
is the privilege of the Gaiete to play nothing 
but sad pieces. If they could have sprinkled in 
it a few of the witticisms of the Italian Minister, 
people could have managed to laugh a little. 
After all, Sardou is greater than the historian, 
because he invents history. He could answer 
his critics in the verse of one Arsene Houssaye : 

Tu dis que j'invente I'histoire 
Mais toi, qu' as-tu done invente ? 
Ne fais done pas crier vietoire 
A eeux de rUniversit6. 

You have learned already by the Transatlantic 
cable that the play of M. Victorien Sardou is 
of the school of Shakespeare. He has even 
aspired to the sacred terrors of ^schylus. He 



lO 



Life m Paris. 



has, therefore, been obliged to make short work of 
history. He has hit upon an admirable situation 
which has hitherto escaped the dramatist and the 
tragic poet. It is that of a woman who kills 
her enemy, returns to finish him, and cannot 
help coming to his assistance when he feebly 
asks for water. The whole feminine character 
is there, in its sudden evolution of hate and of 
love. La Rochefoucauld said, "There is no 
hate in woman which is not born of love." 
This fine scene which transported the house, at 
a critical moment where the play was about to 
be shipwrecked, was in danger of turning into a 
farce, because a gavroche murmured, " That is 
droll ; there is Leah giving water to La Foun- 
taine." But the situation was too fine not to 
gain the enthusiastic applause of the public. 
Tragedies which fail through a comic word are 
tragedies made according to rules of the Abb^ 
d'Aubignac. One who does not offend against 
rules has no tragic genius. Grammar is made 
for schoolboys. Every gifted man has his own 
grammar. 

You have heard that all Paris is to be seen at 



Life in Paris. ii 

first representations, but this is incorrect. There 
is little more than the Paris of art and literature. 
This is by no means the " upper ten thousand." 
When I was young, Ma'amselle Rachel, who 
ruled the House of Moliere, had me made Direc- 
tor of the French Theatre. I gave there a hun- 
dred new plays. I therefore had an opportunity 
of studying the fanatical habitues of first repre- 
sentations. I soon saw that, with the exception 
of a score of celebrities and a dozen ladies of 
society, the house belonged by the nature of 
things to criticism and its ladies. There were 
plenty of marriages of the Twenty-first District, 
from which you must not infer that the women 
were especially pretty. On the contrary, one 
could not help asking how those men, whose 
trade it is to be clever, and who must have pass- 
ed through the Temple of Taste of Montesquieu, 
should have chosen companions so ugly. One 
thinks of the speech of the husband who sur- 
prised a languishing lover at the knees of his 
wife, who was monstrously ugly : " Ah, Mon- 
sieur, and to think that you were not obliged to 
do it." 



12 



Life in Paris. 



I do not mean by that that Messieurs the 
Critics, ordinary and extraordinary, all have 
monsters in their boxes. I know more than 
one who hides away there in the shadow, and 
under a fan, a pretty woman. But, after all, 
criticism in general does not love beauty, perhaps 
because it does not love genius, possibly also 
because it is not handsome itself. But it has 
its consolations in thinking of Socrates and 
Xantippe. 

At second representations, on the other hand, 
in all - the respectable theatres, you will see a 
brilliant company. These evenings are a festi- 
val of the eyes for the spectators. Great num- 
bers of fashionable women are there, in toilets 
which contrast strongly with those of the night 
before, without counting the diamonds which 
the " traveling companions " of criticism have 
not. Notwithstanding, at the first evening of 
La Haine, the fashionable people had made an 
invasion, under the pretext that the piece would 
only run one night. It will run 300. Beside 
the Princess Mathilde was the Princess of Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha — (open your almanac). In the 



JLffe m Paris. 13 



proscenium box opposite reigned in his omnipo- 
tence King Offenbach, surrounded by his family 
and friends. The' Imperial box could not be 
better filled. Madame Offeabach has the head 
of an empress. The middle box was occupied 
by another celebrity, partly American, partly 
French, partly Italian, the granddaughter of 
Lucien Bonaparte, by turns Princess of Solms 
and citizen Rattazzi, now the loveliest widow of 
the two worlds, dazzling with wit and diamonds. 
She had with her a young bride, Madame de 
Molinari, who has just married the editor-in- 
chief of the Debats. 

Comedy of comedies, all is comedy, more or 
less serious. M. Jules Sim.on was telling this 
evening at M. Theirs' how Lord Ripon has 
passed, with arms and baggage, over to the 
enemy. The enemy is the Church, according to^ 
M. Jules Simon, but he was delighted to see 
the heir-apparent of the Crown of Great Britain, 
the Prince of Wales, to call him by his name, 
accepting the position of Grand Master of Free- 
masons in Great Britain. When we make a 
step in advance, it is well also to make a step in 



14 Life in Paris. 

in the rear. M. Jules Simon does not love the 
Church. I remember, at the funeral of the 
gallant Henri Regnault, that ray of sunshine 
which has survived death, when they were taking 
up a collection in the Church of St. Augustine, 
M. Jules Simon, who was then minister, believ- 
ing that it was for the poor, took out a five- 
franc piece, but when he heard the sexton, a 
man with a mustache like a drum-major, crying 
in a deep base voice, " for the expenses of the 
Church, if you please," he carefully put his five- 
france piece in his pocket, although it bore the 
effigy of Napoleon the Third. 

There has been, these last few days, a battle 
of courtesy between Madame Jules Simon and 
Madame Rattazzi. These two ladies, both more 
or less worldl}^, or more or less blue-stocking, 
received on Thursdays. Now as they receive 
very nearly the same people, and as they live three 
miles apart, the one at her dear fifth story in 
the Place de la Madeleine, the other in the mag- 
nificent Hotel of the Duke of Aquila, Avenue 
de ITmperatrice, they placed their guests on the 
rack, because they could not dine twice, even 



Life in Paris. 



IS 



if dinner was served in the first house at seven 
and in the second at nine. Madame Rattazzi 
has, therefore, sur^-endered. It is on Sundays 
hereafter that all parties will dine with her — 
M. Ordinaire beside M. Carolus Duran, M. de 
Lacretelle beside M. de Bonaparte. Madame 
Rattazzi is like that Senator of the Empire who 
said, "I not only understand all opinions, but I 
share them." 

It is the most hospitable house in Paris. 
Scotch hospitality is surpassed forever. For 
instance, Madame Rattazzi invites twelve persons 
to dinner, and fifty come. This is no fable. 
Even to-day she swore to me that we would be 
twelve. We were forty-nine. In such circum- 
stances you dine as you can. The mistress of 
the house is greatly the superior of the widow 
of Scarron, who substituted a story for the roast. 
The pretty Princess performs every Sunday the 
miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. 
There are many people in Paris who give excel- 
lent dinners where nothing is lacking except 
guests. The true triumph is to give a bad din- 
ner where there are always four times as many 



1 6 Life in Paris. 

guests as a«-e expected. I ought to say, by the 
way, that there are many gourmands in Paris, who 
dine nowhere so well as at the Hotel Rattazzi. 

Paris this winter becomes again the city of 
social dissipation. They have reconstituted an 
official circle which throws open its salons gen- 
erously enough. There are pleasant receptions 
at Marshal MacMahon's and at the Duke Deca- 
zes', while the other ministers are taking their 
time to become worldly ; more intimate recep- 
tions at the house of the Princess Mathilde and 
the Princess Troubetzkoi. These people of 
esprit, take the lead. It must be confessed that 
there are at present some politicians who are 
men of esprit, like the Duke Decazes just named. 
M. Emile de Girardin receives also, but it is just 
his bad luck that while he would prefer politi- 
cians, he has none but clever people, proving 
the wisdom of the nations expressed in the 
proverb that no one here below is content with 
his lot. 



_J 



Life in Paris. 17 




VENUS FROM ASTRONOMICAL AND 
SOCIAL POINTS OF VIEW. 

THE GODS OF OLYMPUS IN DRESS COATS A 

MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WHO 
WANTED TO BRING VENUS TO TERMS AMER- 
ICAN WOMEN REPRESENTING THE CLASSICAL 
STYLE OF BEAUTY. 

Paris, Dec. 14, 1874. 
ARIS has come back to its masked 
balls. There is no Carnival with-out 
its more or less Comic Opera Balls, 
and there would be no Paris without Carnival. 
All the festivities come at once. Yesterday I 
went to a sword festival, where I applauded the 
fencing of Ezpeleta Potocki, Alphonse de 
Aldama, and Merignac. In France the sword 
finishes every education ; it should be made a 
part of the compulsory course. They have 
seized Les Diaboliqiies^ a volume in which 
d'Aurevilly has shown an infernal wit. I think 
the judge must have desired to assume the 

2 



i8 



Life in Paris. 



celebrity of this original genius. But all these 
trifles fade away before the lustre of Venus. 

The Transit of Venus is our sole preoccupation 
for the last three days. You know at Paris the 
most important events have only a week of echo, 
whether it be the death of a guillotined king, or 
the leg of a dancer. In three or four days, 
therefore, Venus will have had her share of at- 
tention. Perhaps there will remain some trace 
of her passage somewhere else than in the ar- 
chives of science. Who knows but the boys will 
say, " Hast thou seen Venus 1 " as they now say 
" Et ta Sceur? " For there are now two diction- 
aries of the Academy, the one which is always 
commencing and never finished under the Dome 
of the Institute, and that which is improvised in 
cafes and greenrooms. You are of course fa- 
miliar with our dictionar}^ of tlie latigue verte of 
which Roqueplan, Theophile Gautier and Henry 
Murger have given such picturesque examples. 
While the savants of the world were scouring: the 
universe to observe the wanton planet with their 
spectacles, we, who stayed in Paris, have seen 
Venus pass by. We find the gods of Olympus 



Life in Paris. 19 

every day in dress coats, even while we burlesque 
them in the theatre to the music of Offenbach. 
The poet was right in exclaiming : 

Gods of Great Homer ! Oh my gods revered ! 
The new wit jeers you in your starry places : 
But soon the day will come when j-ou, in wrath, 
Will rise and smite us with your awful hands, 
With stem and heavenly vengeance to recall 
The wandering spirits careless of your fame, 
Who comprehend not that your chastening power 
Survives the sacred altars overthrown. 
For nothing dies, and even death has life ; 
One day they will return in shining forms 
These fair ambassadors of the Infinite ; 
And when they come, the rosy-finger'd dawn 
Will show the nothingness of churlish Science 
Feigning void heavens above a lawless world. 
But if Olympus is at Paris, it is only repre- 
sented as yet by Venus. You meet her every- 
where, not generally accompanied, as of old, by 
Master Cupid, but dangling at her skirts a little 
negro groom, who serves as her advertisement 
in the perist}-le of the theatre or on the seat of 
her victoria. But this is only her pastime. The 
great comedy of science has been played, as you 
know, at every luminous point of the globe. 



20 



Life in Paris, 



Venus has made her transit radiantly, which has 
permitted the advancement by one step of the 
science of the stars. A hundred years ago 
this capricious goddess played a saucy trick upon 
the travellers who set out to see her divine nu- 
dity. Not being in a good-humor, she enveloped 
herself that day in a cloudy dressing-gown, and 
the inquisitive savants could only pack their bag- 
gage and come back. Among them, however, 
there was an obstinate member of the Academy 
of Sciences at Paris who insisted on bringing her 
to terms. He stayed ten years in China, but 
never succeeded in overcoming her royal wil- 
fulness. He certainly deserved a little humanity 
from her, but never received it. He came back 
to Paris, so absolutely forgotten that nobody 
recognized him, especially not the one who had 
taken his chair at the Academy and the one who 
had become his heir. The indignant savant 
brought suit against both of them, but could not 
find an advocate to assume his cause. Nobody 
like ghosts. It was probably in relation to him 
that the proverb was altered, " the absent are 
always wrong — to come back." The poor man 



Life ifi Paris. 21 

died of grief in the time of the revolution. If 
he had lived a little longer the guillotine might 
have proved to him, as to Lavoisier, to the son 
of Buffon, and to Andre Chenier, that science 
has no chance against the equalit}^ of the scaffold. 

But this time Venus showed herself without 
clouds, and new calculations are to be made in re- 
gard to the celestial routes. I spoke just now of 
the great comedy for this reason : A celebrated 
astronomer of Paris, a star of science, who has 
discovered more than one star of heaven has said 
to me in strict confidence, " Here is a sealed 
package ) when our distinguished travellers have 
returned with their innumerable discoveries, I 
shall communicate to the Academy of Science 
the same facts, which I have discovered to-day, 
toasting my toes by my own fireside, safe from 
the wind and rain." 

This is grave, for it weakens the significance 
of astronomy instead of strengthening it. I 
remember one day at an exhibition in Touraine 
where the celebrated Babinet was President of the 
Section of Sciences, and I was President of that 
of Fine Arts, we discussed, before the Bishop of 



22 



Life ift Paris. 



the diocese, the miracle of Joshua. I took 
the side of the ecclesiastic against the man of sci- 
ence for the amusement I found in the fury of this 
worthy man. At last he said, " After all, you are 
perhaps right. A hundred years hence there 
may come a spirit enamored of novelty who will 
prove that the sun is not fixed in the midst of 
the planets, and this innovator may become as 
famous as Galileo. We who study the heavens 
are doing injustice to our fame in not looking for 
noon at fourteen o'clock." 

However, until Babinet's prediction is realized, 
we can still say the sun rises and sets. But to 
return to Venus. 

For philosophers, lovers, and artists, Venus will 
always be the most majestic symbol of plastic 
beauty. The Christian religion created the 
Byzantine beauty, the seraphic, which appeals 
only to the sentiment ; but the Renaissance 
brought us back to the ancient worship. To be 
beautiful now-a-days, it is requisite to have, 
like Venus, perfection of lines and dazzling color. 
We have at Paris — do you doubt it Madame ? — 
scarcely anything but American women to repre- 



Life in Paris, 23 

sent that Olympian style of beauty. This ques- 
tion was agitated yesterday at a dinner given by 
the Countess of Juvisy, where were present M. 
Emile de Girardin, the Princess of Bourbon, 
Count Potocki and the Countess Potocki, 
Alberic Second, and the Marquise de St. Phal, a 
beautiful American, Mrs. de Forest, the neo-Greek 
Henry Houssaye, the painter Cabanel, and the 
historian St. Victor. It was proclaimed that the 
first of nations for the production of beautiful 
women, according to the Greek rite, was Amer- 
ica. 

American women come a great deal to France, 
not because they are more admired there than at 
home, but because Paris is a temperate country 
where beauty lasts always, while in New York, 
where there is neither Spring nor Autumn, beau- 
ty suffers from the violence of a changeable cli- 
mate. To-day, at the Bois, our conversation of 
yesterday at the Countess Juvisy's received full 
justification. I saw there, at the last races of the 
season, the beautiful and spirituelle Miss Robin- 
son, whose charming little pictures might be 
sisn^ed by Chaplin ; and in the same defile beside 



24 Life in Paris, 

the lake, your other countrywomen, Lady Ran- 
dolph Churchill ; Mrs. Howe ; Mrs. Cutting, just 
returned from America \ 'the Downing family, 
illustrated by two pretty young girls in a charm- 
ing carriage ; Miss Seligman and . her mother ; 
and the Post family, always faithful to the Bois. 
They are in deep mourning, but the Bois is in 
mourning in Autumn. There was also Mr. Suth- 
erland of Nevada, in a yellow-wheeled coach, 
which makes much ado, I will not say about 
nothing ; and Mr. and Mrs. Huston in a high 
coupe which seems to turn up its nose at low 
ones (they left San Francisco six years ago to 
visit Paris, and are thoroughly visiting it still) j 
Mr. and Mrs. Harriman, who are acclimated in 
Paris, their pretty black ponies being well known 
in the Avenue Josephine. My victoria crossed 
in front of that of Mr. Barreda, who also likes 
black horses, when they are English. Mr. Bar- 
reda and Madame Cortes, who are both Peru- 
vians, must have plenty of silver mines down 
there to supply so much gold here. And there 
goes the hansom of another young American, 
already famous, for if one of its wheels is called 



Life in Fans. 25 

the Wheel of Fortune, the other may be called the 
Wheel of Ruin. 

We have made an Academician, M. Leon Say, 
and we have lost one, M. Husson, in the Acad- 
emy of Moral and Political Sciences. M. Leon 
Say is well known to you as a politician and a 
journalist. M. Husson w^s Director of Public 
Charities. Do you know what that is ? It is a 
grand administration for the support of which 
everybody is put under contribution. They tell 
me it is for the poor, but I say it is for the poor 
administrators. 




26 



Life in Paris. 




PARISIAN GOSSIP ABOUT COUNT VON ARNIM AND 

NEWSPAPERS ACTRESSES AND DUCHESSES 

DEATH OF CHARLES COLIGNY. 

Paris, Dec. 21, 1874. 
Ill the wits of Paris have said 
their word in regard to Count von 
Arnim, who was himself a wit, and 
nothing more. He was for a moment as 
celebrated as if he had committed a murder 
and been defended by Maitre Lachaud. He 
only needs a knotted cord in his prison to 
make as much noise as Marshal Bazaine. Two 
memorable treasons ; I say treasons, for they 
both betrayed themselves. A man cannot serve 
two masters at once, and Marshal Bazaine and 
M. von Arnim tried to serve their country 
and their ambition, especially the latter. For 
this reason they have been personally fusti- 
gated by public opinion. 

This proves how journalism has supplanted 



Life in Paris. 27 

diplomacy. This trial taught us nothing which 
we did not know before, because on every sub- 
ject in the four quarters of the world, the news- 
paper opens its hand, full of truths. This was 
the opinion yesterday of the Princess Trobetzkoi, 
the Duke de Gramont, and the Vicomte de la 
Gueronniere, who were dining with Emile de 
Girardin. I suppose when M. de Girardin comes 
to power he will suppress all the futile myste- 
ries of diplomacy. You know that M. de Girar- 
din believes he has the gift of resuscitating dead 
newspapers. He accomplished this miracle with 
La Liberie^ whose 20 subscribers he bought for 
20,000 francs ($4000). In a few days he printed 
20,000 copies. But you cannot perform miracles 
everyday. He has paid $40,000 for the 200 sub- 
scribers of La France. How many has he to- 
day ? Yet he is still the same sprightly wit and 
energetic spirit. But this time he has made him- 
self the advocate of a bad cause — because it is 
the good cause. You know that in France, if 
you wish success, you must only defend desper- 
ate causes. 

The Ambassador of Germany was anxious to 



28 



Life in Paris. 



know whether people would come to him more 
or less after all the scandal of Count von Arnim. 
At the last reception he had the official and 
the foreign society, but with the exception of M. 
Thiers and M. de Broglie, two great ministers 
without portfolios, there was not a Frenchman 
nor a Frenchwoman. Madame de Rothschild 
made no mistake in the door. 

Although I wish to write nothing but worldly 
gossip, I should find myself talking politics un- 
less I took care. You have a correspondent here 
who has a hundred eyes to see ever}lhing and a 
skilful pen to say ever}-thing. He judges from a 
higher point of view, not being blinded by our pas- 
sions. I leave him to speak, therefore, of the great 
affairs of the old world. But he will permit me to 
mention politicians when I find them on the 
w^oman's side. A fete, which was not political, 
was given yesterday by Madame Rattazzi, in 
the little palace of the Duke of Aquila, avenue 
de rimperatrice. People have not ceased to 
call the avenue by this name. The old baptism 
effaces the subsequent ones. It is time to have 
done with these changes of name which prevent 



Life in Paris. 



29 



provincials from finding their way in Paris. It is 
about as if you should change the names in his- 
tory. To be logical, you ought to call the Com- 
mentaries of Caesar the Commentaries of Brutus. 

Madame Rattazzi gave for the benefit of the 
poor an amusing performance, with Mile. 
Virginie Dejazet, Mile. Favart, Mile. Rousseil, 
and the ladies of quality who wish to remain an- 
onymous — among others the Marquise de Pepoli. 
One day when Mile. Rachel found herself social- 
ly at the house of the Countess Castellane, she 
was asked by the Marquise de Fenelon to pass 
out first from the salon to the dining-room. 
Mile. Rachel bowed and refused. 

" Let me insist, Mademoiselle Rachel, you are 
such a great actress. " 

" After you, Madame la Marquise," responded 
Mile. Rachel, with her fine smile. 

She was right, for fashionable women al- 
ways play comedy well. The reason is simple 
enough. The actresses nearly all go to the 
Conservatoire, which is a bad school ; while the 
fashionable women go to the school of society 
from their earliest years. It is there they learn 



30 Life in Paris. 

the art of the fan, the art of lying, of talking 
without saying anything, of speaking so as to 
disguise their thoughts, of blushing and weeping, 
and of laughing to mask the heart. For every- 
thing is conventional in the world ; the more a 
woman becomes unnatural, the better bred 
woman she is. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that the women of society played so well yester- 
day at the Theatre Rattazzi, where they gave 
" Bertha's Piano," " Not Loving Too Much is 
Loving Too Little," and " Horace and Lydia." It 
is known that the lady of the house has twenty 
times played this antique gem of Ponsard with 
Ponsard himself. She was always charming in it. 
She wears the peplum and repeats the amorous 
verses with all the grace of the Lesbian women. 
As a contrast. Mile. Rousseil declaimed some 
heroic lines with all the energy of a superb 
beauty. She is at present the stage idol of Paris. 
Since she has been playing the Hole at the 
Arts' Theatre, all the managers are on their 
knees to her, except the manager of the Fra?t(ais, 
who is on his knees to Mile. Croisette. Mile. 
Rousseil just now told me that she was to make 



Life in Paris. 31 

a visit to America next year. Since Mile. Ra- 
chel you have seen nothing like it. She has 
dramatic genias in the highest degree. If she 
played with a fan, she would break ten every 
evening. But she can run the gamut of senti- 
ment with all the science of the woman and the 
artist. 

" Where have you learned all this ?" " In my 
heart." Besides, the theatre is a school of man- 
ners — ^for actresses. 

There was plenty of beau monde at this soiree. 
Gen. Turr, the Prince Galitzin, M. de Roths- 
child, Lord Sunderland, Louis Blanc, Count 
Bouille, Gen. du Barail, the historian of Alcibi- 
ades. Angel de Miranda, the Duke de Frias, 
Gen. Wolff, Gustave da Molinari, Major Rattaz- 
zi. Octave Feuillet, Clesinger, Gen. Blanchard, 
a whole brigade of pretty women, Italian March- 
ionesses, Spanish Duchesses, English and Amer-^ 
ican ladies, and some Parisiennes. 

Paris lost yesterday a night-walker who has 
left no fellow. He was a friend of mine, and his 
name was Charles Coligny. He was buried with 
some display, at night, for it is dark at 5 o'clock, 



32 



Life in Paris. 



I was, therefore, not altogether lucid in my elo- 
quence, speaking over his remains. I had given 
a tomb to Gerard de Nerval ; I gave the same 
one to Charles Coligny, not through economy, as 
a retired shopkeeper might think, but because 
there was more than one point of resemblance 
between these two poets. Both of them thought 
that gas had advantageously replaced the sun. 
They therefore went to bed in the morning and 
got up at night. They came together one even- 
ing. Gerard on the point of putting an end 
to his life, Coligny still believing in his dreams, 
but not having twenty-four sous between them. 
Do not suppose that the money question had 
any consequence for them ; they were the sort 
of men to whom every one extends a Scottish 
hospitality. They were free spirits who cared 
nothing for the pomps and vanities of this world. 
They only believed in the passing hour. In real- 
ity they were wise because they lived as they 
pleased. No one could regulate either of them. 
I had given to Gerard de Nerval a little pavilion 
in my old Beaujon hotel. He could have lived 
there, among books, in a garden full of vines, 



Life in Paris, 



ZZ 



having only a step to walk to breakfast and dine 
with me. But he would not stay a fortnight in 
the pavilion because he was compelled to rise in 
the morning and go to bed at night. That was 
not his affair at all. But those who do not give 
their reason the benefit of the sunlight, always 
end badly. Gerard de Nerval hanged himself 
in the Rue de la Vielle Lanterne, and Coligny has 
just died with a waist like a barrel, gained, as he 
said, by "effacing" some 50 glasses of beer 
nightly. His evening began at six and ended at 
daylight. Before devoting himself to beer he had 
made a prelude, like your Edgar Poe, and our 
Alfred de Musset, with absinthe and sacre-chien. 
Charles Coligny, though not comparable to these 
great geniuses, was no ordinary man. He dis- 
dained to join the Society of Men of Letters, and 
perhaps would have refused to join the Academy 
for the same reason, — that he would have been 
forced to associate with men who were not his 
equals, as grammarians. His pride was Castil- 
ian, and he draped himself in his misery like a 
grandee of Spain. He was once very handsome, 
with his black curls, his large eyes, brilliant and 

3 



34 



Life in Paris. 



gentle, his mouth equally well cut for smiling 
and sneering. He resembled Moliere, though 
not in comic genius, for he could not invent a 
dialogue. He had no imagination. He was a 
paraphraser, whatever his subject. He had an 
odd vanity of his own. At night, when he wan- 
dered through Paris with his friends, the night 
walkers, he frightened the passers by and waked 
the sleepers with the cry, which has become fa- 
mous, " Oh he ! Bourgeois of Paris ! Hide your 
wives ! Charles Coligny is passing ! " If he does 
not live, it is not for want of style or wit in his 
work, but because he lacked creative imagina- 
tion. His prose will be " effaced " like the pots 
of beer he drank, but something of him will re- 
main in his sonnets. 




I 



Life in Paris. 



35 




THE CARNIVAL IN FULL BLAST THE NEW OPERA 

HOUSE MAN ON LESCAUT AND MADEMOI- 
SELLE BERNHARDT AN INVASION OF GYPSIES. 

Paris, Dec. 28, 1874. 
CHATELAINE of the middle ages, 
who was giving edifying lessons in 
the catechism to her page, suddenly 
asked him one day, " How many capital sins 
have we ? " " Four," answered the page, un- 
hesitatingly. The lady gave the boy a box on 
the ear, saying, "Learn, Sir, that seven are 
none too many for us." In these Carnival 
times I think there is an Eighth Capital Sin 
which includes all the others, at least in Paris — 
and that is Woman ; though some flatterer has 
already said that " woman is the fourth the- 
ological virtue. 

The Carnival has begun its follies all along 
the line Every one wants to prove that the Sep- 
tennate does not mean ennui. The balls of the 
comic opera have stolen away the habituh of 



I 



36 Life in Paris, 

the Grand Opera balls. Metra's violin conducts 
all the jollities to the air of the Waltz of the 
Roses, amid the smiles of men and the laughter 
of women. One would think that Santa Glaus 
had put back Alsace and Lorraine in our stock- 
ings. This gives me an idea which you perhaps 
may communicate to M. de Villemessant. You 
know he wanted to give as a premium to the sub- 
scribers of the Figaro a card of admission to the 
opera. Why did not he, who seems omnipotent, 
offer Alsace and Lorraine as a premium ? That 
would have been a great attraction, and when 
everybody had rushed to the office to subscribe, 
he could have given them the two provinces, ir 
chromo or bon-bons. 

We are only beginners in journalism. If we 
look in your direction we see ourselves immeas- 
urably surpassed at once. We crawl along in 
the rear of the newspapers before the flood. 
We give the news of yesterday, and you give the 
news of to-morrow. M. de Villemessant under- 
stands better than any one among us, journalism 
as it ought to be, though he confesses he is not 
yet satisfied with the Figaro, But he proves, 



Life in Paris, ^ 37 

with his 80,000 subscribers, that he knows how to 
manage his pubhc. His personaUty, besides, is 
very useful to his paper. In France, the direc- 
tor of a journal should be as much before the 
public as an actor in the theatre. His face and 
character must be generally familiar. M. de 
Villemessant passes for a lucky man, and a man 
of wit. Lucky he has been at every game of life 
except trente et quarante and baccarat ; witty he 
always is. Yesterday, in the green-room of the 
Theatre Fran^ais, Mile. Favart ran up to him. 
" M. de Villemessant ! • How can you permit 
such calumnies ? Your Figaro says I am 40 
years old." " Well," answered Villemessant 
gayly, "kiss me as many times as that estimates 
slanders you." Mile. Favart threw herself on 
the neck of M. de Villemessant and kissed him ten 
times, distributing the favors equally on his two 
cheeks. " Very well," said M. de Villemessant, 
" hereafter the Figaro will tell the truth, and in- 
stead of 40 years, will give you 50." And all the 
actors in the green-room stood laughing about 
the burly journalist and the great coquette. 
The Gaulois follows the Figaro closely in 



38 



Life hi Paris. 



public curiosity, but the personality of M. Ed- 
mond Tarbe is not so demonstrative as that of 
M. de Villemessant. It was feared for a mo- 
ment that the editor of the Gaidois would leave 
his journal, but he has gone back to it more 
valiant than ever. M. Edmond Tarbe is too fond 
of pseudon}Tns. He uses all sorts of masks in 
his writing. Six months ago, under the signa- 
ture of Jacques Lefevre, he published a series 
of Parisian stories, founded on fact, of a start- 
ling brutality. The time for prudery is past ; 
one must be bold in his drawing to strike the 
imagination. The modern world must be painted 
as it is, without conventional trimming. The 
old style is out of date ; three-quarters of the old 
romancers no longer set on the scene anything 
but phantoms. In fact, it has always been a 
failing of the Parisian scribblers to study roman- 
ces rather than the volume of human life. But 
to imitate Homer it is not enough to imitate the 
IHiad. 

We have in Paris novelists by the dozen who 
live in their studies and get their passions out of 
their book-cases. It is not thus that the great 



Life in Paris. 39 

master, the Abbe Prevost, painted the human 
heart. Manon Lescaut is a masterpiece, simply 
because it is romance which has been lived The 
Abbe Prevost is none other than Des Grieux. 
In the Eighteenth Century the Abbes lived in 
Paris as they now live in Rome. They were 
amiable pagans, who did not waste their days in 
church ; they are represented rubicund and round, 
with merry eyes and pursed-up lips. They saved 
their souls in their own way, going to the Court 
and the Opera. They disguised themselves 
and went in search of adventures. They said 
their prayers after supper. They did not share 
the righteous indignation of Bossuet, but thought 
that everything was the best in the best of worlds. 
The Abbe Prevost himself said, " I shall never 
make a romance so impossible as my own life." 
And, in fact, what an incredibly romantic and 
poetic figure is his. Three times a Jesuit, twice 
a soldier, in turn an exile and an outlaw, but 
always a lover whether in Holland or England 
or France, inhabiting a cell of the cloister, or 
haunting the cabarets of Paris. This was how 
he became the novelist of the human heart. I 



40 Life ill Paris. 

once said in the preface of a new edition, " the 
passion of the Abbe Prevost for his heroine has 
made Manon Lescaut the missal of lovers ; his 
art of story-telling has made it the breviary of 
romancers." Alexander Dumas II., recently 
writing, also, a preface of this immortal book 
said, " Manon Lescaut is the prayer-book of 
courtesans." 

Well ! I think that both of us were making 
phrases, in our two prefaces. Courtesans do 
not read Manon Lescaut much, and those who 
do read it, do not seek in it the art of loosing 
their lives while beguiling men. Woman has 
not passed in vain under the tree of knowledge. 
Whatever she may be, coquette or ingenue, 
she can still teach all the romancers their 
business. 

They will tell you at New York that the Grand 
Opera at Paris is about to open. Don't you be- 
lieve a word of it. There is no Grand Opera at 
Paris. What matters the monument, if the soul 
is lacking ? The revolution of 1870 finished the 
French Opera, which was already very sick, as 
well as the Italian. The operetta then got the 



Life in Paris, 41 

upper hand. Offenbach has dethroned the last 
of the demi-gods. To reconstruct a veritable 
French opera they say, little is wanting, except 
singers and dancers, chorus, scenery, and orches- 
try. We have nothing of all these. We have 
one singer, M. Faure. But he is a sacerdotal 
comedian of an exasperating perfection. A wit- 
ty woman has said, " He is perfect, but every- 
thing perfect is tiresome to me, even perfect 
love." We have no longer, therefore, the Grand 
Opera of Paris, but the Grand Opera of the pro- 
vinces. 

While awaiting the opening, the Parisians have 
gone in procession to witness the work of 
Charles Garnier. It is a fury of ornament, a 
mania of gilding. Charles Garnier is an artist 
of great talent but he does not possess the French 
genius. One might say to him what was said to 
the ancient sculptor who had gilded his statue : 
" Not being able to make it beautiful, you have 
made it rich." There are, nevertheless, some 
very successful things about the building. The 
thin/oyer, for instance, with its ceilings by Baudry, 
has the dazzling aspect of the Moorish and Ve- 



42 Life in Paris. 

netian monuments. The paintings of Baudry 
are the most beautiful feature of the Opera. 
Garnier insisted upon Baudr}^, and in this he was 
fortunate. 

I came out of the Opera without having been 
able for one moment to rest my eyes, dazzled with 
gilding. M. Charles Garnier has not understood 
that the genius of the architect is in the contrast 
of simplicity and ornamentation, of the beautiful 
and the pretty. He has tried to be eloquent 
from the threshold of the peristyle to the vault 
of the auditorium. There was no silence for the 
spirit. One thought of a writer who should run 
himself out of breath, without using any periods 
or commas. I went at last to repose my eyes, fev- 
ered with gold, at the Theatre Frangais. There 
was true luxury ; much grandeur and much simpli- 
city. I arrived at the moment when Phedre was 
dying for the hundred thousandth time ; that even- 
ing in the form of Mile. Sarah Bernhardt. Since 
Rachel, this is the first actress who has the tem- 
perament of that great antique lover. She has, 
therefore, gained a triumph. She had spent so 
much passion in two hours of tragedy that when 



Life in Paris, 43 

she returned, dragged in by Hippolyte, there was 
nothing left of her but soul. So that the papers 
next day began anew their pleasantries in regard 
to this impalpable body. The legend of Mile. 
Sarah Bernhardt must have crossed the sea. 
You doubtless know how the wits vie with each 
other in describing her leanness. One says she 
can walk in the rain without an umbrella because 
she can pass between the drops. Another re- 
plies that this is an exaggeration, but he adds 
that one evening, when some one tried to run 
away with her, she escaped by hiding behind her 
riding whip. 

Have you heard of the Zigeuners, those Hun- 
garian musicians who are now disturbing Paris ? 
They have the diable aic corps and pandemonium 
in their fiddles : wild rhythms, frenzied and 
plunging harmonies, strange and passionate in- 
spirations, military music, amorous trills, pictur- 
esque waltzes and quadrilles, to split your ears. 
It recalls those etchings where Callot depicts the 
marches and halts of gypsies. Their cloaks are 
ragged, but superbly draped. By force of civili- 
zation art perishes, like society. It must be re- 



44 Life in Paris. 

freshed once in a while by a return to barbarism. 
On nearer view these Zigeuners are charming. 
This evening the celebrated Gen. Turr, who has 
still remained Hungarian in spite of his Italian 
glories, served them to us at dinner, not exactly 
as a new dish, for the gypsies were in the adjoin- 
ing room. The party, at which there were 
representatives of all circles, was pitched in a 
high key, for the Zigeuner music had somewhat 
bedevilled us. The guests were not content with 
being witty, but danced also as if they were still 
at court, at th.Q petits Lundis of the Empress, so 
gayly that the moralist could not have said, 
" Those dancers sketch with their feet the por- 
trait of their folly." 

If I had the right to talk politics, I would say 
that the Chief of State has gone hunting, and 
might finish all my letters in the same way. 
Happy people, we have gone back to the Golden 
Age. 



Life in Paris. 



45 




NEW YEAR FESTIVITIES THE QUEEN OF SPAIN 

AND HER PARISIAN PALACE DEATHS AND 

DANCERS — POLITICIANS ON ICE. 

Paris, January 3, 1875. 

IC JACET 1874. Happy the people 
who have no history, says the philo- 
sopher. I do not know whether the 
year 1874 has made the happiness of nations, 
but it certainly has no history. 

It has, however, finished by a great event in 
old Europe. Spain, which is fond of stage 
effects, has played the fifth act of her last 
comedy. All the neighboring powers, who wit- 
nessed the spectacle, applauded its close. The 
leading actors were called before the curtain. 
Alfonso XII., who left Madrid a child, returns a 
man. Perhaps the Spaniards in exiling him had 
really only one idea — to force him to learn his 
lessons well. The Emperor Napoleon III. said 
laughingly, " I knew nothing when I went to 



46 Life i?i Paris, 

the University of Ham ; the prison was my best 
tutor." The Prince of Asturias might say the 
same of his exile. The ready-made politicians 
say that Spain, like France, is not yet ripe for 
the Republic. The truth is, it is much too ripe. 

If I speak to you of the New Year's gift of Al- 
fonso XII., it is because I was at the Hotel Bas- 
ilewski when this coup was announced. It was a 
sunstroke. You know how tumultuous is Span- 
ish joy — cries, tears, bursts of laughter, the whole 
orchestra of gayety. People looked at each other 
embraced and looked again. It was no dream ; 
there was another King in Europe, and this King 
a simple school-boy home for a holiday. A child 
who was there cried out, " He is lucky, the 
Prince ; he doesn't have to go back to school." 

Will Queen Isabel now go to Spain ? Or 
will she continue to hold her hospitable court 
at the Hotel Basilewski, where, indeed, she had 
her courtiers as at Madrid, courtiers of the past 
and of the future ? For more than one Spaniard 
saw on the horizon the rising sun of the Prince 
of Asturias. Queen Isabel took no care of poli- 
tics, saying that politics would take care of 



Life in Faris. 47 

themselves, and that all the great events which 
make the world's history are written on high. 
While awaiting other destinies the Queen con- 
tented herself with witty conversation, well-or- 
dered charities, and well-written letters. She 
writes in French as in Spanish with easy grace, 
though she will now probably give up the lan- 
guage of exile to a great extent, even if she re- 
mains in Paris. 

While the Republic was falling in Spain, 
Ledru-Rollin was falling in Paris. He was a 
man of heart and a man of wit, devoted to art 
and to letters. I knew him in 1832, not exactly 
in society, but in the street. We were two in- 
surgents of June ; I a student in rebellion, and 
he already an advocate of rebellion. This brave 
gentleman, who was represented as a sort of 
ogre to little children, went through life with a 
gentle face and smiling lips. In his youth he 
dressed like Count D'Orsay. If all the Repub- 
licans had been of his school, they might to-day 
give the country gentlemen lessons in manners. 
There are, however, radicals here and there of 
the same good kind. M. Ordinaire, for instance, 



48 



Life in Paris. 



goes to parties in three-button gloves. Ledru- 
Rollin left a fortune, of which he did not know 
the amount. Among his heirs is a brother-in- 
law of mine, a prominent banker, and he is also 
ignorant of the value of the estate, which con 
sists of a little corner of Paris, the value of 
which varies according to events. We may say 
that M. Ledru-RoUin sacrificed his fortune to his 
opinions, for under the Republic Parisian real 
estate loses 25 if not 50 per cent. 

All parties follow the road of death. Yester- 
day, at St. Philippe du Roule, the dies irce re- 
sounded over the remains of Mademoiselle Marie 
Chevreau, daughter of M. Leon Chevreau. 
There were present all the stars, I might say all 
the tears, of the Bonapartist party ; M. Rouher, 
M. Haussman, the Duke de Mouchy, Marshal 
Canrobert, M. Joachim Murat. She was a 
charming young girl, in all the beauty of early 
youth. Here lie Seventeen Springs. On her 
tomb might be written diis epitaph of the An- 
thology : " The Dawn, with her rosy fingers, 
plucked her in the earliest sunlight " 

In these first days of Januar}'' one must be 



i 



Life in Paris. 49 

made of steel, and steel well-tempered, to do 
one's duty as a Parisian in High Life. For ex- 
ample, I, who am nothing more than a poor slave 
of the quill, have fifteen invitations to dinner 
this week — two a day — and everybody dines at 
the same hour. I began this evening at M. 
Thiers's, in company with MM. Mignet, Barthe- 
lemy St. Hilaire, Emmanuel Arago, Ernest 
Renan, a few deputies of the tiers-parti^ members 
of the French Academy, a princess, and a 
duchess — the Princess Troubetzkoi and the 
Duchess Colonna, the one an artist in politics 
and the other in sculpture, two great ladies, if 
there are such. The Princess is always sharing 
in the agitation of events, continually in their 
flux and reflux ; while the Duchess is as grave 
and calm as marble — though you must under- 
stand I mean the marble which has descended 
from its pedestal. With the Princess Troubetz- 
koi all the vails of European diplomacy are as 
nothing ; she sees through not merely the acts 
but the very souls of sovereigns. She loves 
politics as other women love ribbons. She pre- 
dicted to me the late revolution in Spain and 

4 



50 Life in Paris. 

another one which is still to come. What I ad- 
mire in her is that she never flatters power or 
majesty; she disputes, face to face, with every 
form of pride ; she does not wish in discussion 
to be treated as a woman or a princess ; like St. 
Simon she loves the truth even against herself. 
She speaks with passion, but she does not push 
her prejudices into error, as is so often the habit 
of those who preach Humanity. She adores M. 
Thiers, but only on condition that she shall not 
flatter him. Nothing is mor.e amusing than to 
see the pair of them beginning a battle of ideas 
and theories. They fight with courteous though 
trenchant weapons. When the Princess has ex- 
hausted her resources she says to her adversary, 
" After, all you are only a great historian ; " which 
means, " You only study men in history while 
I study them from nature." 

Well, those who study men from nature, and 
those who study them in history, are equally ill 
informed. For as man is not a reasonable 
animal, how can he be judged ? He does not 
even understand himself. When you think you 
thoroughly understand his character, he escapes 



Life iti Paris. 51 

you by some unforeseen caprice. M. Thiers 
thought he understood MacMahon's character, 
but here is MacMahon wanting to be Septennial, 
King by the Sword, Absolute King, in that in- 
credible Republic which only lives by the suffer- 
ance of Orleanists, Legitimists, and Bonapartists. 
The very day that the Hotel Basilewski was 
in gala, there was no less festivity at another 
Hotel Basilewski. Let me explain. Alexandre 
Basilewski, who represents one of the great for- 
tunes of Russia, came to live in Paris ten years 
ago, carried away by his taste for Gothic art. He 
built in the Avenue du Roi de Rome a great 
mansion, not for himself but for his gallery, very 
much as I had done ten years before in the Champs 
Elysees. When the mansion was finished, he 
could never feel at home in it, because he had 
there suffered a great sorrow. Just in time the 
Queen of Spain was exiled. In all Paris there 
was nothing but the Hotel Basilewski which could 
recall her lost splendors, by the magnificence of 
its staircase and the grand fashion of its saloons. 
It was regal ; so the Queen invested two millions 
in it, and Basilewski, at that price, was delighted 



52 Life m Paris. 

to be put out of doors. He rented, like a simple 
mortal, a little house in the Rue Blanche, No. 49. 
It was less than nothing, but Basilewski acknowl- 
edges no obstacles. He built for his incom- 
parable master-pieces a gallery in the garden, 
where he has placed the rarest of museums under 
the protection of two or three hundred pigeons 
who reside there. The house is none the less 
hospitable for not being large ; and on the day 
when the Queen of Spain was radiant in the 
arms of her son, Basilewski had twenty-two of 
us at dinner to finish and begin the year worthily. 
There were all the Russians of the official world 
at Paris^ famous antiquarians, and men of letters, 
renowned for their dexterity with the knife and 
fork. Alberic Second, Paul de St. Victor, Henry 
Houssaye, and several others, who are celebrated 
in two or three wards of Paris, but whom you do 
not yet know. We dined a la Pusse, that is to 
say, twice ; first as a prelude in the drawing-room, 
and then in the dining-room ; which did not pre- 
vent some of us from supping at last in the gal- 
lery after some very interesting conversation 
about arms, faience, miniatures, retables, the 



Life in Paris, 



53 



thousand and one relics of the art which starts 
at the Catacombs to arrive at the Renaissance. 

That evening Paris was amusing itself every- 
where. I speak of the Paris which does amuse 
itself. There was a ball at Countess Walewska's, 
who is still as young as her daughters. The 
ball was a bouquet of youth : Mesdames de 
Renneval, de Rothschild, de Reverseaux, de 
Fontenay, de Regnault St. Jean d'Angely, Leo- 
pold Lehon, the Princess Czartoriska. Prince 
Joachim Murat and Mademoiselle Walewska 
conducted the cotillion. But before the " Ger- 
man," Waldteuffel, at the stroke of midnight, gave 
the signal of the New Year. Formerly every 
one kissed his partner, but now they touch the 
end of their gloves. This seems very cold — ^but 
it is the first of January. The lady of the house 
gave to each of her guests adorable little memo- 
randum-books, which may one day be romances. 
If one of them ever comes into my hands, I will 
let you know. 

At the Elysee they are preparing the two 
official balls, which will be officially tiresome. 
For you cannot fuse into a dancing party the 



54 



Life in Paris. 



society of all parties. The royalists have no ob- 
jection to dancing over a volcano or upon the 
Republic, but they will not dance with it. There 
has been a dance on the ice also, but a thaw has 
cast cold water on the skaters' festival. The 
Prince de Sagan and the Prince d'Aremberg had 
made incredible exertions to make the fete a 
brilliant one. But the gods willed otherwise, es- 
pecially the god Thor. Nevertheless there was 
some skating on New Year's. It was remarked 
that the Orleanists had it all their own way on 
the ice ; the Count and Countess of Paris, the 
Duke and Duchess of Chartres, Madame de 
Pourtalbs, the Marquis of Lau, Madame de 
Montgomery — but the ice melted ! 



Life in Paris. 



55 




A.N APOLOGUE OF M. THIERS THE OFFENDED 

FAIRY THE SPARTAN CLUB GEN. READ's 

ALBUM AMERICAN BEAUTY IN THE OPERA 

HOUSE THE ROYALTY OF FASHION. 

THIERS yesterday told me this le- 
gend : — When France came into this 
world as a nation, it was in the time 
of the fairies. As France was to be a great prin- 
cessthe}^ invited to her cradle all the good fairies ; 
the fairy of wit, of riches, of conquest, of beauty, 
of grace, the fairies of harvest and vintage. 
It was an unparalleled festival throughout 
the young kingdom ; ever}^where they danced 
and drank. But in the very midst of this public 
rejoicing an uninvited fairy came to sit at the 
banquet. There were already a dozen at the 
table, and the strange visitor made the thirteenth. 
She was not gay like the others ; on the contrary, 
her face was full of meditation, gravity, and 
sadness. 



56 Life in Paris. 

Every one began to say, " What is she doing 
here, with that unearthly countenance ? " 

She had sat down, but she rose with majesty 
and thus spoke : " You invited all the good fairies 
to the cradle of France, and you forgot me. Woe 
be unto you ! France shall have days of victory 
and conquest. She shall be rich in corn and 
wine. She shall be famous for her wit. She 
shall beguile the world w^ith her grace. But 
whenever she is about to enjoy her good fortune 
an unforeseen catastrophe shall hurl her into the 
abyss of war or of revolution. And thus I shall 
be avenged." " Who art thou then ? " they cried 
out from every side to the avenging fairy. She 
was already at the door ; she turned on the 
threshold and said, in a tone at once solemn and 
satirical, " I am Wisdom ! France may have at 
her cradle all the other good fairies, but as she 
had not me, all the rest will be useless." 

Thus said Wisdom, and Wisdom is always 
right. To-day also — but I will not talk politics. 

M. Thiers is always the wonderful conversa- 
tionist whom you know. While the Left Centre 
revolves around him, continuing in his salons the 



Life in Paris. 57 

discussions of Versailles, he escapes from politics 
by his wonderful fund of talk which has enchant- 
ed the diplomatic and literary world. The 
Duchess Colonna being there with the Princess 
Traubetzkoi the conversation turned upon sculp- 
ture. I wish I could stenograph for you all the 
just and profound things which M. Thiers said 
about this great art. He is certainly a man of 
learning, but he is also above all a man of the 
moment. At the tribune he is always eloquent ; 
but as he himself says, in all intellectual and 
artistic work it is only a question of quarter 
hours. He is very fond of sketches, because 
they indicate much more than finished pieces, 
the sentiment of the artist, and the fire of inspira- 
tion. Michael Angelo in his sketches, Rem- 
brandt in his etchings, give a brilliant proof of 
this truth. They seize upon you because they 
are alive. You seem to have a share in this 
first expression of genius j somewhat as if the 
Creator had permitted you to assist at the making 
of the world. 

Have you ever heard of the Academy of the 
Spartans, or rather of the Spartan Dinners ? For 



58 Life in Fa?'is. 

this is an Academy that dines, which gives it a 
great advantage over the French Academy. It 
has another advantage ; it is not employed on a 
Dictionary. It contents itself with being witt}' — 
at table. It pronounces no discourses nor 
funeral orations. It has held its sessions at the 
Trots Freres Prove?i(aux, at the Fetit Moulin 
Rouge, at the Maison d^Or, and at Brebant's. 

Who is Brebant ? He is a man of genius 
whom circumstances have made keeper of a 
restaurant at the corner of the Boulevard Mont 
Martre. He has been called " The Restorer of 
Letters " first because he bears some resemblance 
to Francis I., and then because his place is 
always full of literary men. He is a \ery gentle- 
manly person, who has become learned by hear- 
ing the conversation of journalists who are not. 
His library is the public. He is always to be 
seen at First Nights in the theatre, where he 
makes a very stylish appearance with Madame 
Brebant, a beauty in full flower, two genuine 
Parisian figures. The Spartans have made their 
favorite domicile at Brebant's. This Academy 
was founded in 1867, in the gay times of the 



Life in Paris, 59 

Empire. Unfortunately it has already lost 
several members impossible to replace, such as 
Theophile Gautier, the Duke of Persigny, the 
Duke of Acquaviva, three original types. It now 
numbers Paul de St. Victor, a brilliant pen ; 
Lord Lytton, whom you know as the poet Owen 
Meredith ; Gen. Read, your Minister in Greece ; 
Xavier Aubryet, a Rivarol and de Maistre in one ; 
Cabanel, the painter of Duchesses ; Henry 
Houssaye, surnamed Alcibiades, probably be- 
cause he is the living image of Lucius Verus ; 
Gaston Jollivet, a witty chronicler in verse and 
prose, a swordsman whose thrusts are like 
epigrams, and whose epigrams are like stabs ; 
Arnold Mortier, the Monsieur de V Orchestre of 
Figaro ; Gen. Schmitt, a brave and clever soldier, 
who could not prevent Gen. Trochu from talking 
instead of acting ; Paul Baudry, one of the four 
great painters of the nineteenth century ; Ziem, 
the Venetian who grinds sunshine on his palette ; 
a novelist, M. du Boisgobey ; a publicist and 
historian, M. Valfrey ; Paul Lacroix, the cele- 
brated Bibliophile Jacob ; Edmond de Goncourt, 
the historian of art ; Dupray, the painter of 



6o 



Life in Paris, 



battles. 1 must pass over some of the best. 
They have elected me — I cannot imagine why — 
President of this Academy, which is by no means 
a sinecure, because this is an Academy which 
dines. 

At the last sitting I proposed a toast — in 
very good champagne — to Gen. Read, who was 
just starting for Greece. He had brought a 
book of blank pages, and said to us, " This book 
will be mine, when each of you has inscribed a 
thought in it." I don't know whether we were 
especially witty that day, but I copy some things 
which fell from our pen. 

There is no such thing as Libert}-', for no man 
is free if he is the slave of his conscience 

All loves — even maternal love — have their 
anguish and their griefs. God has made a pain 
for every pleasure \ the gate of Paradise opens 
into hell, 

A note from a woman, no matter how tender, 
is a sight draft on you ; you must always pay in 
some coin or other. 

Marriage begins with one of the seven sacra- 
ments ; it ends with one of the seven mortal sins. 



Life m Paris. 6i 

Thought is like Jeannot's knife. Common 
men are content to keep it bright for use ; men 
of genius first change the handle and end by 
changing the blade. 

Sooner or later we pardon our friends the 
injuries we have done them. 

If a borrower comes, lend him your ear. 

Women always give more than they promise ; 
men less. 

Love is like liquor ; men say it is killing them 
but always come back to it. 

If you become famous beware of the fools — 
for they always gather around the people who 
are stared at. 

Gen. Read would not write a conceit like the 
rest. He had just experienced a profound grief 
in the loss of his father. This is the thought he 
has inscribed in the book, which is still at its 
first page : 

Life is the road to death. The Indians say : 
Death does not kill, it makes us invisible, it is 
the sorrow of survivors to see no more those 
whom they loved ; but the first friend we lose 
gives a clearer vision to the soul. Every step 



62 



Life in Paris. 



towards death opens a little wider the gate of 
eternity. 

Paris dances, waltzes and whirls. It dresses 
and undresses ; it makes itself handsome and 
ugly ; it laughs or grimaces according to the luck 
of the evening ; running from the Elysee to the 
Opera Ball, from the Faubourg St. Germain to the 
Champs Elysees, chasing gayety until it is out 
of breath. It is not at the Elysee palace that 
gayety is found. Harmony has not yet been 
established in the gay world since 1870. You 
are sure of meeting there the first prizes in 
painting, women beautifully colored and ena- 
melled, but society is occupied in hiding and 
seeking at once; there is the Orleanist corner, 
the Legitimist corner, the Septennalist, the Im- 
perialist, and the Radical. There is one place 
where all get on well together — at the buffet. But 
how far we are from the fetes of the good-natured 
tyrant Napoleon III. Paris is in its full tide of 
carnival folly. Jean Jacque said that gayety was 
half the daily bread of Paris. His bread was always 
black — almost all the bread was black a hundred 
years ago. Now evervbody's bread is white, but 



Life ill Paris. d^^ 

gayety is no longer half the daily bread of Paris. 
The opera continues thronged. Women of 
every circle would like to have it the fashionable 
salon, but they do not venture into the foyer, which 
is the only room that is really habitable. It is a 
pity; for they would be better judged there in 
their grace, their attitude, their freedom of rnove- 
ment. A woman seated shows only half her 
beauty, whatever be the charm of her face. For 
this reason the amateurs of art, who say that 
women are worth more than statutes, never fail to 
be on the grand staircase when the ladies 
descend. The day before yesterday the great 
success belonged to six young Americans who 
occupied the entre-colonne opposite the notorious 
Madame Musard, herself an American constella- 
ted with diamonds. There was never seen in one 
box such a bouquet of young girls, so pretty in 
the aureole of their twenty years. There were 
blondes and brunettes, laughing and sentimental, 
coquettish and ingenuous, all with those American 
eyes which outvie the most precious stones. 
It was a battle of beauty. One would have said 
they were there to defy the women of France, and 



64 



Life in Paris. 



vanquish them on their own chosen field. There 
'was danger that the new building would take fire 
like the old. If it had, it could have been rebuilt 
twice as fine with half the money. 

The Faubourg St. Germain amuses itself, play- 
ing with King's cakes, an innocent game. Several 
Duchesses of the parish of Ste. Clothilde, the 
Duchess Pozzo di Borgo among others, have used 
this social pastime for a royalist demonstration, 
shouting Vive le Roil over the confectionery. 
The Countess de Beaufort, the Countess of Mon- 
tesquieu, the Countess of Juvisy shared in this 
harmless fanaticism. But the true royalty in Paris 
is fashion. A ball dress is a monumental work. No 
man with less than a hundred thousand francs 
of income can permit his wife to go into society, 
dragging those skirts with draperies of damasked 
gauze shot with gold and silver, and all abloom 
with garlands. Do you know the cost of one of 
those trains of Louis XI 1 1, brocade with agraffes 
of brilliants ? A thousand dollars would be no- 
thing for it. 

What would Adam say to this — he who dressed 
his wife with a fig-leaf ? 



Life in Paris, 65 




STORMY WEATHER PARISIAN PRECOCITY THE 

SALON OF A PRINCESS THE GRAVE OF A GREAT 

ARTIST. 

Paris, January 17, 1875, 
WILL commence, if you please, 
"with a line of Victor Hugo : 

" Madame, the wind blows ; I have killed 

three wolves." 

In these tempestuous days which are beat- 
ing upon Versailles, at the very hour of our 
political crisis, this is what Marshal Mac- 
Mahon might say. To drive from his mind the 
fact that he is surrounded by a mere shadow of 
government, he goes hunting, precisely like Louis 
XVI. in the great days of the Revolution. 

France, which has counted more than a hun- 
dred parties and more than fifty governments 
since 1789, could easily accustom herself to none 
at all. During the two weeks in which we have 
had only the phantom of a ministry, Paris has 
been gayer than ever. We dine, we sup, we 
dance, we marry, we separate, we marry again 



66 



Life in Paris. 



and separate anew. The theatres are crammed ; 
it requires influence to get a stall. Although 
the opera has neither men nor women who can 
sing, although its dancers are cripples, it is taken 
by storm four times a week. It is the same way 
with all places of amusement. It would seem as 
if Paris had lost the faculty of staying at home. 
We are so perverted by our thirst of curiosity 
and our gluttony of the forbidden fruit that we 
no longer care for the fireside— that sweet poetic 
fireside sacred to the games of childhood. What 
am I saying ? Children no longer play. I have 
a son ten years of age. He is something of an 
American, for his mother is a charming woman 
of Lima. Do you want to know how he amused 
himself at his last holidays ? Listen. Some one 
said to me, " Do you know that your son drives 
the prettiest pair of black horses in the Bois? " 

I did not believe a word of it, but the next day 
Madame Alfred Musard, who drives her four-in- 
hand with the grace of Apollo behind the horses 
of the Sun, said to me, " I congratulate you. I 
have just met your son with a cigarette in his 
mouth driving two spirited horses, like a man." 



Life in Paris. 



67 



I should tell you that I have two sons. If the 
one belongs somewhat to the New World, the 
other belongs a good deal to the Ancient World. 
He is the historian of Apelles and Alcibia- 
des. He has lived much in Greece, and would 
probably still be there if he had not come 
back to France to enlist in the army in 1870. 
This one rides, but does not drive; so that I 
had no doubt that the one in question was the 
younger. 

I called him before my tribunal. 

" What does this mean, sir ? They tell me you 
drive in the Bois two black horses taller than 
yourself." 

"Yes, sir." 

" Whose are they ? " 

" Mine." 

" Explain this mystery." 

" I bought them dirt cheap — eight thousand 
francs — and the dealer threw in a basket-carriage 
as light as a feather." 

" And how did you pay for the horses, Mon- 
sieur my son ? " 

"Oh, the dealer knew you. He had sold 



68 



Life in Paris. 



horses to you before ; he knows he will get his 
money some day or other." 

Thus do ten-year-olds amuse themselves now- 
a-days. I sent my son back to the College Henri 
IV. — on foot. 

I told this story to illustrate the state of things 
in France. Children amuse themselves like 
men, and men amuse themselves like children. 

I return to the tempest. While I am writing 
these lines the wind is carrying away my chim- 
neys and twisting the trees of my garden. I feel 
as if I were on the high seas, for just now a 
Neapolitan princess, on her return from Jerusa- 
lem, was recounting to me her horrible passage. 
It was the Princess Piniatelli of the Bourbon 
family. She has given two charming princesses 
to the world, two genuine princesses of the fairy 
tales. One of them has married the Count 
Potocki, a hundred times millionaire, my neigh- 
bor in the Avenue Friedland ; the other remains 
unmarried, though not for lack of suitors. She 
says it is very agreeable to be a marriageable 
young lady, for those who like comedy. The 
mother has been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 



Life in Paris. 69 

She adores her daughters, and made this pil- 
grimage for them. Heaven was for a moment 
cruel to her, for she suffered a terrible storm. 
But it was only an hour of trial j the finest souls 
are those which are most tried. 

You love the sea in America. We do not, 
here in France : any more than Cato. This cen- 
sorious person repented of three things : first, of • 
letting a day pass without doing some good ; 
second, of having confided a secret to a woman ; 
third, of having gone in a boat when he might 
have gone by land. Horace was no braver than 
Cato in face of the waves. He considered sea- 
men as mad as the sea, and would not trust him- 
self in such insane company. Byron, who feared 
very few things, thought it absurd rashness to 
defy all four elements at once by going to sea. 
But if all the world had agreed with these sages 
and poets, we should not have at the Elysee balls 
those pretty Americans who give all the charm 
and brightness they have. We should be reduced 
to contemplate a few toothless Duchesses, and 
shopkeepers' wives in their best clothes. 

We shall not lack for kings, if we go back to 



J 



7© Life in Paris. 

the monarchy. The Countess of Paris has given 
birth to a new prince, who is to be called Charles 
d'Orleans. In the meanwhile his godmother is 
called the Republic. 

The Princess Troubetzkoi gave yesterday a 
talking party ; next Saturday she will give a 
dancing party. Under the Empire the Princess 
was a part of all the fetes of the court. She still 
continues the court with the Princess Mathilde. 
In one of the masked balls at the Tuileries she 
took part in a quadrille of bees. The bee is her 
emblem. Its sting and its honey are both 
evident in her talk. Although her salon in the 
Rue Courcelles is extremely pacific, war is carried 
on there without her knowledge. For instance, 
she used to dream of the fusion of the Centres 
and the fusion of the Princes. Two years ago 
the Left Centre and the Orleans Princes were in 
the ascendent. Now the Right Center and the 
Bonapartists have taken possession. I saw there 
yesterday the Duke and the Duchess of Gramont, 
Gen. Fleury, the Count de La Ferriere, Countess 
Walewska, the Vicomte de La Guerroniere, Mar- 
shal Canrobert, Raoul Duval, Duchess Colonna, 



,A--M^ * L 1 ^ 



T\ 



Zife $ /'<^«>£STA8L!3HED7i 

1 

Count Sartiges, the Dulie d'Abrantes, while the 
Orleans family was not represented by any dl 
its adherents, nor was the Left Centre ; neither ' 
M. Thiers nor M. de Remusat, nor M. Bar- 
thelemy St. Hilaire. All the diplomatic body 
was naturally under arms. But all their orders 
and decorations paled before the eyes of Madame 
Barandiaran, the wife of the former Embassy of 
Maximilian, a beauty who has just dethroned 
even the lovely Madame de Villeneuve. There 
was no one wanting except Gen. Schenck, who 
had just arrived in Paris, and Mr. Washburne, 
who, like a philosopher, only goes out when he 
has nothing else to do. 

The Academy is about to receive Alexandre 
Dumas II., who will pronounce the eulogy of 
Alexandre Dumas I. He said lately: "My 
father has not gone down to the grave ; he has 
gone up to it." Hitherto the deceased has not 
been much talked about. He will go arm in arm 
with his son into the Academy, and take his seat 
in the immortal Forty-first arm chair. It is 
right that justice should be done even in liter- 
ature, while criticism uses such false scales. 



L 



72 



Life ill Paris. 



Balzac died crushed by insults j Diderot would 
have died of hunger if it had not been for the 
Empress of Russia; Moliere died without the 
right of sepulture. 

Alexandre Dumas did not choose his time to 
die. At his death France was herself near her 
last gasp, for it was in 1870. So that people 
scarcely perceived that the great romancer had 
ceased to live. He has been almost forgotten 
since then ; he has hardly an epitaph at Villers- 
Catterets, his birthplace. His pieces are no 
longer played, his books scarcely read. But 
his hour will come. It belongs to his son to set 
forward the clock of his resurrection. 

They say that nations pass away in their great 
men. France is losing hers rapidly. Millet 
was buried yesterday — that admirable landscape 
painter who seized Nature in his nervous grasp, 
and dragged Truth out of her well. It was his 
desire to sleep in the little graveyard of Barbi- 
zon, by the side of his friend Theodore Rous- 
seau. His admirers did not trouble themselves 
to go to his funeral. A few artists of the Forest 
of Fontainebleau were all you could see at the 



Life in Paris. 73 

grave . True, it was a miserable day, a genuine 
landscapists' weather. The wind and the snow 
raved around the coffin of him who had painted 
spring time and harvest with a scriptural feel- 
ing. 

His pictures are priceless but he was always 
poor. He lived in a house near the Forest fur- 
nished like that of a peasant. In fact Millet 
remained a rustic to the end ; he never acquired 
the usages of the world. They tried once to 
make him put on gloves to visit a princess. 
" No," he said, " that would spoil my hands." 
He was afraid of losing his simplicity and sin- 
cerity of touch. He was reproached for having 
painted so many barn-yards. " I suppose," he 
cried, " I ought to paint Nature in her Sunday 
clothes." He certainly never made his life a 
holiday, the poor great man ! He lived upon 
nothing, devoted to his art, which was neverthe- 
less not all his religion, for he always remained 
true to God and the Church. He never forgot 
that he had assisted in the celebration of the 
mass in his childhood. He spoke with pleasure 
of his red robe and his white tunic. Voltaire 



74 Life in Paris. 

said of the Church with his Gra?id Seigneur im- 
pertinence, " The Church is the beggar's Opera." 
The Church was the only opera of this " beggar " 
Millet. You could hear him in his studio sing- 
ing masses, and what he chanted with most fervor 
was the mass for the dead. He defied the 
musicians to produce anything comparable to the 
Dies irce. There were no speeches over the 
grave of Millet. This was well ; for what could 
have been said so simple and so grand as his 
rustic genius. The wind spoke among the trees 
of the cemetery far more eloquently than any 
funeral orators could have done before the open 
grave of that worthy man, who lived only for art 
and who died in God. 

When we have looked over all those scenes 
of country life by this artist, who has been called 
the " painter of dunghills," because he so loved 
to dot the /'s in his representations of nature ; 
when we have breathed in his barn-yards, in the 
midst of those women, who are not cocottes of the 
Quartier Br^da disguised as gleaners, but good, 
honest dairymaids, we find ourselves a little 
strange in Parisian festivities, and we ask our- 



Life in Paris. 75 

selves while saluting that pretty princess, rippling 
with diamonds, with a necklace of pearls, trail- 
ing a robe of topaze satin and golden gauze, with 
a dazzling bodice, and clasps of emeralds, a dress 
which begins, but never ends, we ask where is 
the truth, where is the woman ? Is it the dairy- 
maid or the princess ? 

It is the dairymaid in the morning, and the 
princess at night, the eclectics will say. 




76 Life in Paris, 




THE OPERA QUESTION THE T«^LIGHT OF GAR- 

NIER WIT OF WOMEN IN THE DARK NECRO- 
LOGY OF THE WEEK AND DIGESTION OF THE 
LORD MAYOR. 

Paris, January 24, 1875. 
I HE opera is still in Paris the great pub- 
lic question. \Miat does the fall of a 
minister amount to ? Since we have 
ceased to know the name of Ministers, except per- 
haps of a chief of the Cabinet, we see them coming 
and going with the most perfect indifference. 
We know well enough that neither this one nor 
that one w411 be the salvation of France. It is 
the farce before the great drama. But the opera 
is something altogether different. It is the heart 
of Paris, it is the salon of those who have 
none. The great Hetairai here elbow Duchesses. 
The news of the dav, or rather the news of the 
morrow, is here prepared. The reporters, who 
as a general thing know no more of what is 



Life in Paris, 



77 



going on in the great world than what they find 
on the menus of dinner parties, are as much at 
home at the opera as girls of fashion. This is 
the reason that the opera has caused and still 
causes so much discussion. 

Do not fear that I am going to talk to you of 
the inauguration, for you know already all about 
that. Paul de St. Victor attended to that by tele- 
graph. But he probably did not touch one grave 
question — that of the light. To have a correct 
idea of it, think of a clouded sky. The women 
are furious. They say they can only be half seen 
in this twilight. The flashing of the diamonds 
is barely perceptible. And yet any other hall 
would be illuminated sufficiently by the diamonds 
scattered helter-skelter over the opera. Madame 
de Cassin exhibits four millions worth ; Madame 
Musard, five millions ; Madame de Paiva, six 
millions. In the presence of such miracles, 
Madame de Pourtales, Madame de Villeneuve, 
Madame de Bozerian, Madame de Reuneville, 
Madame de Peire, the Duchess de Mouchy, and 
the cluster of Americans are content with the 
blaze of their own beauty. The Marquise 



78 



Life in Paris. 



Anforti, Madame Rattazzi, and Madame Bou- 
lewska carry only pearls and bouquets. 

But the question of light remains to be solved. 
A scientific commission has been appointed, but 
such a question cannot be decided with specta- 
cles. Besides, the savants will consider only the 
stage, while the house is the thing to consider. 
All the interest now centres in the audience. 
There are 30,000,000 French and foreigners who 
want to see the opera at least once. They care 
very little whether this one sings well or that one 
dances badly. The director can continue mak- 
ing his fortune with his provincial troupe. If he 
had the first performers in the world he could 
not make more money. I have advised the 
Minister to replace the commission of savants 
with a commission of women. In the meanwhile 
the fair elegantes despair of doing themselves 
justice at the opera, obscured by such half lights. 
They revenge themselves on the architect by a 
thousand witticisms. They say, for example, 
that he ought to have decorated before and not 
after, because his decoration is of a better tone 
than the hall. They say you must pass through 



Life in Paris. 79 

the Chapel of Expiation to get to your box. 
They say nobody will go there to see the women 
because it is a curiosity-shop They say you may 
see every style there except French style. They 
say that M. Gamier probably lives in an entresol 
because ever)rthing is icrase. They say they feel 
as if they were at a cafe concert, and that people 
will next be smoking cigarettes in the private 
boxes. They say that the most appropriate over- 
ture would be Orphee aux Enfers. 

On that opening night all eyes were turned 
tow^ard the King of Spain. There was some sur- 
prise that Marshal MacMahon did not invite 
him into his proscenium box, for the King of 
Spain had only a box like a common mortal. I 
went to chat a little with him about that great 
spectacle which awaited him in Spain. He had 
not forgotten that saying of Lamartine, " France 
must not be bored." He has decided to give 
the Spaniards a change of spectacles, to avoid 
further dramatic surprises. 

Not far from the opera is the Church of St. 
Augustin, another monnment of Napoleon IH. ; 
but they built the Lord's house faster than the 



8o 



Life in Paris. 



Devil's. There was a great crowd there yester- 
day to hear a funeral mass for the dead Emperor. 
And since we are speaking of mortuary masses, 
let me mention three men who have recently died 
and who deserve an epitaph : Emile Pereire, the 
Duke of Mortemart, and the Count of Liede- 
kerque. Emile de Girardin has well said of M. 
Pereire that he was a parvenu of labor and not 
of luck. This great financier would have been 
great if he had remained a man of science. No 
one had a greater gift of annihilating space in 
imagination and in fact. He saw v^^ith equal 
clearness things near and far. I knew him when 
he was a St. Simonien when he wanted to make 
over the world again under the dispensation of 
Enfantin. It was a time when gods were plenty, 
for the philosopher has said that there are mortal 
gods as well as immortal. I knew at that time 
another god named Le Mappah, but Enfantin 
was more effective because he wore the official 
costume of the new Olympus. Le Mappah con- 
tented himself with a red hat, such as were then 
worn by medical students. I had very little 
reverence for him, because one morning going 



Life in Paris, 



8i 



to make him an unexpected visit I found him in 
a horrible garret, under the iron rule of a jealous 
goddess who kept hira under lock and key. 
What can you think of a god who is not permit- 
ted to go out except at certain hours ? Still, Le 
Mappah was a handsome and elegant fellow. 
He died too young for glory. 

Emile Pereire was not even a demi-god 
among the St. Simoniens. He merely studied 
under the inspiration of Enfantin. In late years 
I have seen at the Hotel Pereier, Enfantin poor 
and Pereire a hundred times millionaire. But 
Enfantin was not in the least abashed by all this. 
He still held his head high, saying, " Oh ! if we 
had only had these hundred millions when we 
were preaching at Menilmontant ! " Menilmont- 
ant was their Olympus. Pereire had perhaps 
become too rich, but he ought not to be con- 
founded with those adventurers like Mires, for 
instance, one of those gluttonous grasshoppers 
who would have fain have renewed in France 
the plagues of Egypt. A great financier of the 
Directory had said, " Business is other people's 

money." That disgusting little Mirbs said in his 

6 



82 



Life ill Paris. 



turn, "Bad business is other people's money," 
and every business of his was bad. The God of 
the Hebrews is just ; Mires died without a sou. 

The Duke of Mortemart had played a part 
in diplomacy and politics, and so died Grand 
Cross of the Legion of Honor, after having been 
Peer and Senator. He had retired from the 
world in a more than princely, a historic resi- 
dence, the Chateau de Meillant, which was made 
illustrious by the beautiful countess of Chateau- 
briand, the favorite of Francis I. It is a smaller 
Fontainebleau, built from the designs of Prima 
ticcio. France, after all its revolutions, is still 
full of these magnificent castles. 

Count Liedekerque was killed in the chase. 
He was greatly beloved in Parisian society, 
where he would never have been taken for a 
Belgian but for his name. " That unhappy 
shot," said Mile. Fiocre, "will not leave us a 
huntsman the less ; to-morrow you will see in 
the newspapers, as usual, ' Marshal MacMahon 
has gone hunting '." Some one said to Louis 
XIV. : " Take care, Sire ! you lose almost as 
many gentlemen in the chase as in the army." 



Life in Paris. 



83 



" Never fear," answered the great King ; " God 
will not forget what I have done for Him." 

Spiritualism continues to disturb and to 
soothe people's minds. The research of the un- 
known will always be a passion of souls aspiring 
towards their eternal source. We owe to Mme. 
Maria d'Alguquerque a curious volume bearing 
this title : " The Memoirs of two Spirits." There 
is one objection made to this theory of anterior 
existence, that we ought to have some recollec- 
tion of it ; but has not Alexandre Dumas 
answered this objection? "Does the grub re- 
member the ^^g ? the chrysalis the grub ? the 
butterfly the chrysalis ? and completing the circle 
of metamorphosis, does the ^gg remember the 
butterfly ? God has not wished to give to man 
this pride of memory which he has not given to 
animals. From the moment that man should 
remember that he existed before he was man, 
man would be immortal." 

But for all that, we have no Ministry. We 
get on well enough without. Ministers imagine 
that they govern France. But France guides 
herself, for she makes the public opinion which 



84 



Life in Paris. 



makes and unmakes Ministers. Yesterday an 
unpublished letter of Voltaire was sold, from 
which I take these lines : " Force and weakness 
arrange the world. If there were nothing but 
force, all men would be fighting ; but God has 
created weakness to make everything easy on 
the earth. Thus the world is composed of asses 
which carry and men who load." Find a Minis- 
try in that ! 

I had almost forgotten the Lord Mayor, whom 
we have among us. I fear he will die of indiges- 
tion. The papers are full of the dinners in his 
honor. Unless he dines four times a day he 
will never get through with them. I imagine his 
official wig turning white with the labor. Surely 
Gargantua was not worthy to loose the rosettes 
of his shoes. 



Life in Paris. 85 




A soldier's ball-room talk — THE ROMANCE 

OF A WALTZ TERPSICHOREAN APHORISMS 

THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON A PERSIAN 

PARABLE. 

Paris, January 31, 1875. 
T the last Elysee ball Marshal Mac- 
Mahon, Marshal Canrobert and I were 
chatting over the "volcano of the 
dance." It was towards midnight, the hour 
when the Duke of Magenta leaves the little 
" Salon of Salutations " to walk about among his 
guests. They were dancing and waltzing with 
great gayety. The women were making peacocks' 
tails with their trains, and doing wonders with 
their faces. It had been a feverish day at 
Versailles, but nobody had heard of it in Paris. 
Marshal MacMahon made to us this judicious 
remark : " See how sensible Paris is ; it ignores 
what is going on at Versailles. I have no 
Ministry ; the Assembly is in tumult for a word ; 



86 Life in Paris. 

but all that does not keep Paris from dancing. 
They dance over a volcano ; but it is a volcano 
of roses." 

The Marshal was right. It would seem as if 
the great wall of China lay between Paris and 
Versailles, between Versailles and France. An 
ancient philosopher said : " The things of this 
world go of themselves. Men try in vain to 
swim against the current. The stream bears 
them away, because the gods have ordered all 
things." This is fatalism ; but one is tempted 
to believe in it when one sees in France all 
parties rushing to the assault to attack nothing 
at all. It is true, as was said yesterday at Prin- 
cess Troubetzkoi's, that we were in the Republic. 
You know that on the 30th of January, of the 
year of grace 1875, the Republic had a majority 
of one vote at Versailles : so that everybody 
was saying that evening, "There is but one 
voice for the Republic." It is true that day 
before yesterday the Monarchists and Imperialists 
had rejected the Republic by 27 votes. So that 
in France everybody ought to be suited. Friday 
we had a monarchy ; Saturday, a Republic : 



Life in Paris. 87 

Monday they will cry, Vive VEmpereur ! and 
Tuesday, Vive la Commune I 

But this is nothing but a fever of phrases. 
Nothing is changed in France ; there is only a 
Ministry the more or less. 

Everything goes on well. At the soiree of 
the Elysee, Marshal Canrobert, who hides a 
waggish spirit under his grave aspect, said to 
us : " There is a great deal of talk about stag- 
nation j look at these ladies and tell me if they 
do not show that there is great progress in 
painting." In fact, there has never been a finer 
show of color, both among Parisians and for- 
eigners, than at this Elysee ball. There were 
even a good many enamelled, which is by no 
means the same thing, for painting the face is a 
work of art like a picture or a pastel, while 
enameling consists in injecting a dose of arsenic 
in a solution of rose water between the flesh and 
the skin. 

Marshal Conrobert talks in axioms. Seeing a 
man go by who has belonged to all the regimes, 
in turn Republican and Imperialist, and who to- 
day is a devoted courtier of Marshal MacMahon 



L. 



88 



Life in Paris. 



and the Duke of Aumale, Canrobert said : 
" Poor Janus ! he had only two faces !" Speak- 
ing of ingrates in politics, he said : " What 
would you have ? Fortune is never alone in 
turning her back on us." The Marshal was 
talking gallantly to the Duchess of "* "* ^. 
" Keep on, " she said, " Marshal, I am a fortified 
place. I am not afraid of you." " Take care, 
Madam. You are a strong place, but the 
sentinels of the heart are always drowsy." 

The second ball of the Elysee was finer than 
the first, because there were more pretty women. 
It was the luck of the invitations. The Ameri- 
can colony was gracefully represented by Mes- 
dames Hoffman, Darwin, Robinson, Stebbins, 
and tutti quanii. 

What romances there are in balls ? A portion- 
less young girl — say a hundred thousand francs 
— comes in with a Greuze face, under a forest of 
blonde hair. A bored young man, with thr.ee hun- 
dred thousand francs income, asks her to dance. 
The thunderbolt of love had struck his heart. 

" Mademoiselle," he said, " do you like to 
dance ? " " Very much indeed. Sir." " And to 



Life in Paris. 89 

waltz ? '' " Passionately, Sir." " Will you make a 
sacrifice for me ? " 

The young lady looked at the young man. 
"Why not?" 

" Very well, Mademoiselle, do not dance nor 
waltz this evening ? " 

" And for this sacrifice .'' " " I offer you my 
name and my fortune." 

"This is a great deal," said the young girl, 
more tempted by her feet than her heart. " Do 
you hear the violins ? " 

" Mademoiselle, I am called the Count de 
* * *, and I have three hundred thousand livres 
of income." 

The young girl doubtless reflected that with 
three hundred thousand francs income one 
could pay for a great many fiddles. 

" Monsieur," she said, " let us compromise. I 
will not waltz or dance with any one but you." 

" No Mademoiselle, I want a complete sacri- 
fice. You are the most beautiful person at the 
ball \ every one is gazing at you ; we will walk 
into one of the little drawing-rooms and chat 
like married people." 



go 



Life in Paris. 



*' Already ! " said the young lady, making a 
saucy face. But she had left her place in the 
quadrille. She leaned upon the arm of the 
young man and allowed herself to be taken to 
the staircase. "This is despotism, Sir." " Yes, 
Mademoiselle, I wish to be master before if not 

after." 

The young girl mounted the staircase, saying 
to herself, " Three hundred thousand livres of 
income, a hotel, a chateau, a racing stable, a 
hunting equipage, travel like a princess, have 
caprices like a queen." 

They went slowly up the steps, for the Elys^e 
staircase is invaded, after the manner of Vene- 
tian fetes, by a sea of guests. The quadrille was 
ended. All at once the young girl hears the 
prelude of Olivier Metra's Serenade, a Spanish 
and French waltz, full of rapture and melancho- 
ly, full of passion and sentiment. She could 
resist no longer. She withdraws her hand from 
the arm which holds it, and glides like a serpent 
through the human waves ; she arrives breathless 
*m the grand salon of the orchestra. She no 
longer knows what she is doing, the Serenade 



Life in Paris. 91 

has so bewitched her. A waltzer who does not 
know her seizes her on the wing, and bears her 
into the whirlwind. 

Meanwhile what is the three-hundred-thousand- 
a-year man doing ? He is desperate j he has had 
happiness in his very hands, and now he sees it 
vanishing from him like a dream, all because 
Waldteufel had the unlucky idea to play that 
diabolical waltz. The unhappy lover tries in 
vain to reason with himself, to curse his folly, to 
swear that he will never look at the woman again. 
He has not the courage to go up the stairs. 
He descends four steps at a time ; nothing stops 
him ; he follows the young girl and arrives 
almost as soon as she does before the orchestra. 
Alas ! She is already-olf for the waltz. She is a 
thousand leagues away from him. The first-comer 
holds her in his arms, breathes the fragrance of 
her adorable blonde hair, revels in the warm 
glances of her soft eyes, the color of heaven. 

Is not this the moment to give you my opinion 
of the Waltz 1 I will translate it in these maxims 
which La Rochefoucauld would hesitate to sign. 



92 Life in Paris. 

The waltz is a double life. 

The most reckless women are less dangerous 
than the most platonic waltzes. 

The waltz can give love to those who have 
none, as love gives wit to those who lack it. 

Love is often nothing more then the exchange 
of two quadrilles ^nd the contact of two waltzes. 

A woman has learning enough when she can 
tell the difference between a two-time and a 
three-time waltz. 

After waltzing, some women go through a 
quadrille as a purgatory to the waltz. 

Women pardon to the waltz what they would 
never permit to the dance. 

We are still in the full tide of dinners, balls, 
and suppers. Princess Troubetzkoi has given 
her last Saturday. All the best of Paris was 



Life in Paris, 



93 



there in the best foreign company. There was a 
great deal of congratulation addressed to M. Fer- 
dinand de Lesseps, who is going to unite Paris 
with London by a submarine railway, and who 
is the recent father of two new children — if you 
please. I believe that makes seventeen in all, 
not counting the time he lost in the East as a 
bachelor. Madame Thiers was there, but M. 
Thiers could not break through the lines of the 
Left Centre whieh held him prisoner at home. 
The Duke de Gramont exhibited a new way of 
wearing his star of the Legion of Honor, abridg- 
ed to the size of a ten-sou piece, at his button- 
hole. Emile de Girardin, like me, contented him- 
self with a sprig of lilac at his button-hole. The 
most decorated man was Ricord, still young with 
his 77 years. "Every year one year less," he 
said gayly, but added, " one year less to live." 
Emmanuel Arago told me at M. Theirs's that 
he had found a good way to snub people who 
asked his age. " Alas ! I am much nearer 60 
than 50." In fact he is 64. 

Princess Troubetzkoi wanted M. Caro, the new 
academician, to repeat his reception speech. As 



94 ^if^ ^^^ Paris. 

he refused on the pretext that he did not wish to 
be tiresome, she said, " Oh I know it is full of 
holy water and litanies." " For that reason," 
said M. Caro, " I am to be received in Lent." 

Three diplomats, more or less poets, were 
talking in a corner of the grand salon. They 
were Lord Lytton, Commander Nigra, and the 
Persian Ambassador. Each was confiding to the 
other his last poetical idea. This was the Per- 
sian's : 

" Youth came down quickly from the moun- 
tain. When she came to the plain she laughed 
in the midst of the dazzling flowers, stars of gold 
and silver on the carpet of grass. 

" The flowers were the passions of the heart, 
which mocked in their fresh dresses at the som- 
berriament of the pines. And the butterflies, 
those smiles of the spirit, chattered with the 
flowers, and said to the pines. Go up to the moun- 
tain, for you frighten us in the valley. The 
pines, who are wise, made no answer to the flow- 
ers and butterflies. But when Winter came on 
dressed all in white, they talked among themselves 
of the mysteries of heaven and earth. The little 



Life in Paris. 95 

flowers were buried under the snow with the 
butterflies. They mocked no longer at the grave 
and pensive pines. 

" Thus youth departs — the passions fall under 
the snow. But man remains and becomes 
wise." 

P. S. — I forgot to say that the young girl who 
waltzes and the young man who does not have 
become engaged. I will tell you their names 
next week. The fiance has bought a dispensa- 
tion so as to be married before Lent. 




L 



96 



Life in Paris. 




AT THE OPERA BALL— THE FOLLIES OF AN EVEN- 
ING—WHAT PEOPLE TALK ABOUT TO STRAUSS 
MUSIC. 

Paris, Feb. 7, 1875. 
WRITE this more or less Carnival- 
esque letter from the grand fete of 
the Opera. Hitherto we have found 
this palace of music and of dance 
excessively tiresome in default of singers and 
dancers. To-day it is amusing because it is 
a festival of surprises and the unforeseen. " Do 
you like masked balls, Madame ? I adore them ; 
that's why I give them." The philosopher says 
that we should live with uncovered faces ; the 
women say masks are indispensable. When they 
have no masks they use their fans, because they 
feel that their only strength is in their armor. 
It is useless to say that one must know Hebrew 
to read a woman's heart. You learn after a 
while to read them in French and English, and 
Spanish and Russian. Even the German women 



Life in Paris. 



97 



do not hide their hearts ; far from it. Byron 
said it was because there was nothing in them. ' 

Therefore, if women would preserve their pow- 
er, they must not reveal the answer of their 
enigma. They must not show the faces of their 
cards. The great art is to hold curiosity in 
check. What is more charming than the un- 
known } One who knew his path in life would 
scarcely have the courage to go forward. There- 
fore has Heaven wisely concealed from us the 
secret of life in this world and the next. 

The ball is very pretty and very noisy. There 
is no amusement but in the tumult. We will 
leave the slang of the floor to the " strong, muz- 
zled " champion of Moliere. We will go into the 
boxes to see the game of coquetry. In the grand 
salon you hear the well-known " blague " — the 
academic style. In the boxes we find the tan- 
talizing wit of women of the world, of actresses 
and the "hautes cocottes." You must pardon 
my putting so many words in quotation marks. 
We are not at the French Academy, but at the 
National Academy of Music. It is not M. le 
Due de Broglie who presides ; it is Strauss, with 



98 Life in Paris. 

all the majesty of a man who knows how to 
swing his baton. Strauss had retired from 
affairs — I mean from fiddles — ^but he grew home- 
sick, like all dethroned kings, and was greatly 
applauded at his return to his kingdom. He 
took the floor to say that it was his intention to 
conduct his people through the thickest of the 
quadrilles. They applauded him tumultuously \ 
the painted and sculptured lyres trembled ; all 
the Apollos of Paul Baudry and the others cast 
their rays of gold over the silver hairs of the old 
musician, who contributed a tear to the torrent 
of laughter. 

I enter one of the prettiest boxes ; there are 
four women there. I do not count the men. 
I am assailed by four well-armed tongues, each 
trying to be wittiest. The words jingle like ar- 
rows. It is the beginning of the battle. 

The most impertinent of the four asks me to 
supper. "Yes," I say, "on one condition." 
" What ? " " That you write your follies on the 
tablecloth." " No, I will write them to-morrow." 
" To-morrow it will be too late. I have not come 
here for idle amusement. I have come to draw 



Life m Paris. 99 

up the romantic chronicle of this f^te." "Very 
well, after supper I swear that I will tell you 
things that it will take the rest of your life to 
write ; the most amusing things in the world." 
" You frighten me. I am afraid 3'-ou are a hun- 
dred years old." " A hundred years ? Just 
look ! " And the domino shows me her admira- 
ble teeth, which have only just begun to nibble 
the forbidden apples. The three other domi- 
noes, not wishing to be taken for toothless 
women, showed their mouths also, as yet unpro- 
faned by the dentist. " Thirty-two teeth," said 
one, " those are my quarterings of nobility." 
" Thirty-three," said another, " including one for 
sugar." The third and the fourth had not count- 
ed. " Nobody," said the red domino, " but 

the Countess knows how to count her pearls ; 

her necklace now has five rows ; her husband gave 
her the first two, and she makes him believe 
that the other three are false, and he is the 
only person in Paris who pities his wife — the 
triple idiot ! He is the only one who does not 
know that the Countess adds a row at every 
flirtation." 



lOO Life in Paris. 

A bel esprit comes into the box. He is not in 
the fashion, for he still makes phrases. This 
has grown provincial. " Compliments to my 
beaut}^," said the flame-colored domino, " is 
exactly as if you should light a candle to see 
the sun rise." "Ah! I recognize you," said 
the man of the fine speeches ; " you are like 
the Sphinx of the fable, you devour all who 
do not guess your riddles." " If that were so, 
you would have been eaten long ago — but I like 
fresh meat." " Silence ! you are nothing but 
an Ogress," said the steel-gray domino. " It is 
Madame Blue-beard," said the man of the fine 
speeches. 

The red domino let off a volley of musketry 
to pulverize the new-comer. "What are you 
here for ? You have not enough left to make a 
third-class funeral." " It is natural I should 
come. The most effective undertakers are 
women ; a man is not a mouthful for one of 
them. You, my fair domino, who are playing 
the volcano, have buried me in a bed of lava." 
" You will perhaps go and say that I have loved 
you for yourself." "One is always loved for 



Life m Paris. loi 

one's self. It is not another man's fortune 
which you loved in mine. If one loves the 
millions of M. Rothschild, it is not because 
they belong to his neighbor. If one is in love 
with the genius of a poet or the heroism of a 
soldier, it is not because one is fond of a fool 
or a coward. You see you do not know what 
you are talking about." " I have been to your 
school." " Yes, I paid your tuition. You were 
not so frank in those days. The frankness of 
our sweethearts grows as our fortune diminishes. 
Good-evening." " Go to bed, if you love me no 
more. Without love man only lives asleep. 
When he loves, he lives awake." 

When the hel esprit was gone the red domino 
cried, " To think that that fellow has been a 
minister ! Yet such people as this govern .the 
world." " There is one thing," I told her, 
" more powerful than wit, and that is stupidity. 
Wit is the company of pioneers, stupidity is the 
innumerable army." " Yes," said the steel gray 
domino, " I hate stupidity, but we must not 
speak ill of folly, the mother of us all; that 
sacred folly which is born of nature and dies 



I02 



Life in Paris. 



in nature." " You are right ; let us crown folly 
as a Rosih'e, but let us hate stupidity which aims 
at wit ; stupidity in its Sunday clothes ; the 
learned stupidity which makes speeches out of 
speeches, books out of books, pictures out of 
pictures, tawdry finery out of old rags. You 
see below there those girls who are dancing; 
they have hired costumes which everybody has 
worn before them. That is the history of stu- 
pidity. Voltaire said that the first poet who 
compared woman to a rose was a man of wit, 
while the second was only an imbecile. Voltaire 
never spoke so well." 

Next comes a banker, who thinks that he has 
the entree everywhere because he is announced by 
Master-of-Ceremonies Million. " Here is my 
man," says the steel gray domino. "Are we 
married ? " asks the banker. " Not yet ; but if 
you wish to publish the banns, you must make a 
settlement on me." "What is your name?" 
" Your name is Million, and mine is Diamond. 
Be my jeweller ; set me in gold." The banker 
exerts himself to prove that he pays nothing for 
love but the money of the heart. " That will 



Life in Paris. 



103 



do," said the steel-gray domino ; " you are like 
the misers, who are only prodigal of good 
words." " Or rather," said the red domino ; 
"he is like the sun on the snow — he dazzles, 
but he does not burn." 

The banker sees that he is losing his time. 
" Adieu ! " he says ; " I hate masked balls, 
because there one is always robbed. I prefer 
balls of society." "Yes," said the steel-gray 
domino, "you can go there without paying." 
The banker was replaced by a young husband, 
who came to restore his spirits. " Aha ! here is 
Gaston, just out of prison. Unhappy man, 
what hast thou done with thy wife ? " " Hush ! 

she is dancing at the Duchess : she thinks I 

am in the smoking-room." "What.'* you let her 
dance without watching her partner ? " " No 
danger ; he has feet on which he can sleep 
standing." " And you have wit now-a-days ? " 
" Why not ? My wife has plenty of it, and we 
are partners by marriage." The young husband 
was replaced by a diplomat, a former Ambassa- 
dor of the Sublime Porte. He was very morose, 
for he predicted to us that France would soon 



104 



Life in Paris. 



be dancing the Carmagnole as in 1789, to end 
with the Ball of Victims as in 1794. He spoke of 
the European concert, saying it was not Strauss 
but Bismarck who held the baton. " And what is 
the moral ? " asked the red domino. " The moral 
is that we must dance and raise soldiers." 

Next came the painter Ziem, who was at 
Constantinople with the Ambassador. They 
both agreed that Constantinople would begin 
the universal Charivari. Before that bedeviled 
orchestra, before these laughing women, before 
this hurly-burly of all sorts of passions, the 
painter and the Ambassador, who were two 
philosophers, predicted all kinds of cataclysms. 
One could believe that we were on the eve of 
the Day of Judgment ; that the earth would 
tremble, the sun shoot forth fire and flame, that 
monarchies and republics would devour each 
other like hungry rats, leaving nothing but their 
tails. 

A sign of the times ! The French have tra- 
versed so many catastrophes that they no longer 
fear anything. We talked of all this smilingly, 
not forgetting that charming forms were conceal- 



Life in Paris. 105 

ed under the dominoes, and that the supper 
would be very gay. 

There came a General who had distinguished 
himself on many battle-fields. He wanted to 
take the box by assault. The women gave him 
to understand that they were not in a state of 
seige, which did not prevent him from under- 
taking the attack of the outer works. But it 
was no trifle to reduce that garrison. "Take 
care, General, or you will fall into the moat." 
" It is you, my pretty domino, who are in danger 
of falling there, in trying to defend yourself on 
the platform. Take care, for you know every- 
thing which falls into the trench belongs to the 
soldier." But the lady did not fall, being pro- 
vided with a high-towered and battlemented 
virtue. The General was asked if he was ready for 
another invasion. He said, " Yes, on condition 
that the women march in advance." " Pshaw ! " 
said the steel-gray domino, " a woman can always 
disarm a Frenchman, but never a German." 

We went to supper, not without having tra- 
versed the foyer, because women never enjoy 
themselves without having had their dresses 



io6 Life in Paris. 

tumbled and torn a little. There were plenty of 
impertinences on the staircase, which presented 
the genuine Carnival of Venice, with its flood of 
people mounting and descending. There was 
enough to occupy the ears and the eyes. Coarse- 
ly seasoned pleasantries and oaths and slang of 
the gutter ; and amid these vulgarities here and 
there one caught real witticisms of the true French, 
Gaulish Parisian flavor. When the time comes 
to write " Here Lies France," there will not be 
wanting some man of wit to write her epitaph. 

The supper was very gay. The party drank 
champagne without becoming too champagnay. 
Two of the women took off their masks because 
they were excessively pretty; two others kept 
up the mystery, while eating mandarins under 
the lace of their masks. The celebrated Saint- 
Albin, who is seen at every fete, opened the door 
and asked audience of the steel-gray domino. 
" I am not here," she said. " Where are you ?" he 
asked. "I am at home." "Then give me 
your golden key." "You would be nicely sold 
if I did." 

The two masked women got into rather a 



Life in Paris. 107 

lively quarrel. " My dear, it is all very well for 
you to ask me to wait for you at forty. We shall 
see which of us has the advantage." " That is 
simple enough. I shall have been handsome, 
and you ugly." This is the way I came to know 
that one of the dominoes was not pretty. But 
why did the other conceal her face ? Mystery. 

An hour was spent in discussing the world of 
ideas and follies. When we left the Cafe Anglais, 
the dawn, hooded in fogs, was opening, accord- 
ing to her ancient habit, the gate of the Sun, 
who still had on his cotton night-cap, and did 
not want to get up — a genuine sun of February, 
all white with snowflakes. 

The red domino promised to send me my 
chronicle ready made, but I know what a wo- 
man's promise is worth. For that reason I pre- 
fer to send you this, although I write it scarcely 
knowing if I am asleep or awake. 

P. S. — I forgot to say that the Princess Trou- 
betzkoi as " The Woman of Fire " — she who is 
a woman of snow — and the Marquise Autorti 
as " Our Lady of Thermidor," were brilliant in 
wit and raillery. 



r 



1 08 



Life in Paris. 




WEEK OF EVENTS — DINNER TALK AT M. 

THIERS'S RECEPTION OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS 

AT THE ACADEMY M. HOUSSAYE's MASKED 

BALL MARRIAGE OF HENRY HOUSSAYE — NEW 

ART PUBLICATIONS. 

Paris, Feb. 9, 1875. 
HE week has been crowded with 
events ; tempests at Versailles, squalls 
at Paris, the Wimpfen trial, the recep- 
tion of Alexandre Dumas II. at the Academy, 
and finally the burial of the Carnival, which 
was, nevertheless, in perfect health ; in fact it 
may be said that Ash Wednesday was its 
resurrection day. 

If I talked politics I would tell you how uncer- 
tain are the best informed men of the future. I 
dined with M. Thiers on Shrove Tuesday ; a 
very brilliant banquet, where everybody was 
clever, especially the master of the house. Of 
course the company was not exclusively of the 



Life in Paris. 109 

Left Centre. The Duchess Colonna said she did 
not like Centres, because men without faults are 
equally without virtues. " It is only at the ex- 
tremes that you find great men," Princess Trou- 
betzkoi exclaimed ; " but M. Thiers proves the 
contrary !" Some one spoke of princes, and M. 
Emile de Girardin was reproached for having de- 
serted them. He did not care to excuse himself, 
but said the favor of princes was like luck at 
play. " You win at first, but you end by losing 
everything in their company." 

Madame Theirs, who never speaks without 
saying something — unlike so many women who 
only speak to say nothing — said, among other 
things, one which deserves to be preserved : 
" What makes men so unhappy is their inordinate 
thirst for happiness." 

We have already read the speech of Alexandre 
Dumas and that of the Comte d'Haussonville. 
The diiference between them is that the first is 
written for everybody while the second appeals 
only to the refined. M. d'Haussonville is a fas- 
tidious man who cares very little what is thought 
of him in the lower classes. He thinks, with 



no Life in Paris. 

some reason, that it is a merit in literature not 
to be adapted to everybody. He says that 
in letters as well as the arts all that is good is 
confined to the initiated. In substance as well 
as in form his speech was more felicitous than 
that of Dumas. What succeeds at the Academy 
is not knock-down wit, but that discreet clever- 
ness which plays with its fan, at the same time 
without pruder}\ In one word, it is French and 
not Gaulish wit. 

To one who cannot read between the lines, 
many clear hits at the author of the Dame aux 
Camelias would be incomprehensible, but to those 
who have learned the rhetoric of the Institute, it 
was a delightful treat. Alexandre Dumas will 
be none the worse for it ; but he had to listen, 
he who understands everything, to more than 
one cruel truth. It was his own fault ; for why 
should he have delivered his own eulogy under 
pretext of praising the poet of Mary Stuart ? 
Why should he have compared that tragic queen 
to that tragi-comic young woman who is called 
the Lady of the Camelias. 

But what are these tournaments of eloquence 



i^ife in Paris. iii 

at this hour when Paris is borne in a whirlwind 
of dance and of politics ? Next Friday I shall 
have the honor of receiving at my house most of 
the Parisian and American belles. I shall say 
nothing about the fete afterwards, but I shall tell 
you a little about it beforehand. I only wanted 
five hundred persons, the cream of the cream, 
the flower of the early peas, the tie plus ultra. 
But I am literally besieged. The Opera Ball did 
not succeed because there was such a mixed so- 
ciety ; they say that my Venetian fete will suc- 
ceed because everybody will know or guess at the 
others j political society, diplomatic, and high life. 
The women are going so recklessly into costumes 
that Worth and the three or four great dressma- 
kers of Paris have gone crazy over their needles. 
Several women are to change their costumes 
several times, and I shall have to set aside a 
room for these metamorphoses. This mysteri- 
ous salon will be like a " star " dressing-room ; 
in fact, for this night all the women will be actress- 
es because all will play some part or other under 
their hoods. So the men may beware of the brig- 
ands k la Hood, as in Sherwood Forest. There 



112 Life in Paris. 

seems to be no fear of these dangers, as the most 
serious personages are willing to risk them. For 
three days 1 have been invisible, as if I had the 
Heliotrope of Dante, to escape the necessity of 
refusing invitations. You cannot imagine the 
farces which are played by men in pursuit of 
a pink card. One man sent me his seconds yes- 
terday under the pretense that I had gravely 
insulted him in shutting my door on him. My 
seconds answered that we would see the sun rise if 
he wished it, in the Bois de Vincennes — but after 
the fete. I have also duels on hand with the wo- 
men. It is rumored that I am about to lay away 
my bachelor life, for which it is certainly time ; but 
the origin of this story is that I am about to 
marry my oldest son, M. Henry Houssaye, the 
historian. It is a love match, after the Ameri- 
can and not the French st}'le. We often dined 
at Count Potocki's, who, since he was 20 years of 
age, has had the fancy of numbering his years by 
his millions. He is now seventy-tvvo years 
old, and has seventy-two millions. Do not be 
alarmed ; my son is not marrying the millions of 
Count Potocki. They would be a great embar- 



L'lfe ill Paris. 113 

rassment to him with his severe taste for the his- 
tory of antiquity. He marries a young and 
lovely Italian Princess, a Pignatelli, Princess 
Cerchiara, whose father was ambassador of the 
King of Naples in Russia. In course of dining 
and sitting together the Historian and the Prin- 
cess perceived that they were in love. Is not a 
love match the true mariage de convenance ? 
The Princess, who is the eldest child, and who 
has no brother, brings as a dower to her hus- 
band the title of Prince of Cerchiara. But what 
is far better, she brings him her beauty and her 
heart, without mentioning a palace at Naples, 
where they will go to flirt through their honey- 
moon. 

But I see that I am committing an indiscre- 
tion in giving you a piece of news which I have 
refused to give to any journal in Paris. 

To change the subject, there are few new 
books, though they are reprinting a great many 
old ones. For instance, here is St. Beuve, who 
comes out of his grave with articles of his ear- 
liest youth, the new Caicseries du Lwidi. St. 

Beuve was a rather pleasant talker, but unfortu- 

8 



114 Life m Farts. 

nately in his talks you perceive the schools light- 
ly gone to seed, the odor of the lamp, the mouldy 
perfume pedantry. His fault was that he saw 
neither high nor far. He committed the error of 
holding his dark lantern, which was sometimes a 
very brilliant one, to the trivial side of things. 
Therefore over all that exquisite work where 
there are so many charming pages you will soon 
see stealing the shadow of neglect. It is not 
wise to reprint fifty volumes where the great 
figures of literature are obscured by the infinitely 
little. 

A new journal has been started under the 
title of Les Beaux Arts. It is a publication in 
folio, which will take its place beside L'A7'tiste. 
It will be especially a book of engravings, con- 
taining many contemporary master-pieces ; the 
first number contains Prud'hon's Repentance, 
unpublished designs of Eugene de la Croix, Cha- 
vame's War of Paris, and a ceiling of Paul Bau- 
dry, four admirable things, which will be one day 
priceless, and which cost to-day only three 
francs. All the collectors of France have made 
money in the last few years. For instance, those 



Life in Paris. 



IIP 



who subscribe to L Artiste now have four times 
the worth of their subscription ; it will be the 
same with the Beaux Arts. The Baisers of 
Dorat are sold now for 2000 francs on account 
of the engravings. 







i\! 



Life in Paris, 




THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION THE THREE DEAD 

PAINTERS, MILLET, CHINTREUIL AND COROT 

THE ROMANCE OF A SERVAXT-GIRL's POR- 
TRAIT M. HOUSSAYE's VENETIAN FETE — A 

TRUCE OF POLITICS IN SOCIETY. 

Paris, Feb. 21, 1875. 
VERYBODY in Paris knows the lady 
who goes by the name of Madame 
Threestars. This is her pseudonym, 
her mask, her symbol. She is an adventuress, 
who never crosses the Rubicon because she still 
believes in duty ; but she runs all sorts of risks, 
believing that what you call " flirtation " and we 
C2i\\ parfait amour \s not in the least damaging to 
feminine virtue. This is a question worthy of 
examination. 

Let us first describe Madame Threestars. If 
the plastic in woman reveals her destiny, it is 
certainly in Madame Threestars that we find the 
mission of beauty towards love. Her form is a 



Life in Paris. 117 

harmony of her character. Everything in her is 
pleasure and similitude. She has the twofold 
possession of her strength and her beauty. This 
combination raises her far above other women 
who do not enjoy the continually renewed charm 
of expression. Her beauty has the movement 
of a soul and the immobility of a statue. When 
she walks an invisible world follows her ; her 
shoulders, her hands, her limbs, her supple 
waist continue the loving symphonies of her 
face. Her dress, her shawl, conceal nothing of 
her penetrable and indissoluble charm. Her 
bust is noble and fine as a work of art. Her 
feet are a little like those of Queen Bertha, but 
one needs not be perfect to be human, and espe- 
cially to be inhuman, which she will probably be 
for a long time to come. Her feet then are large, 
but they form a pedestal which affirms all the 
delicacy of her form, all the power of the wo- 
manly statue. 

She thinks herself blameless because she has 
as yet committed only little sins. You find in 
her the audacity of a page. She is thus bold 
because she walks in company with her con- 



1 1 8 Life i?t Paris. 

science. If some day — do not forget this trait of 
character — you should see her timid and re- 
served, it is because she will have become like so 
many others, a hardened sinner. In the mean- 
while she goes everywhere. She is adored by 
ever}^body because she loves nobody. 

Apropos of her, I return to the question of 
parfait amour, or flirtation. There are grave 
philosophers who would exclude these two words 
from the Dictionary of the Academy, under 
pretext that the Way of Love of which St. Au- 
gustine speaks, leads to Dante's hell of Passions. 
These serious philosophers are wrong. We do 
right to brighten life occasionally with smiles and 
sunbeams. The Way of Love leads generally 
to marriage. As to those who get upset on 
the way, so much ^the worse for them, but ex- 
amples are necessary. It is certainly no great 
crime to linger a little by the green wayside, to 
pluck the wild flowers, to make nosegays of for- 
get-me-nots, in one word, to waste a few happy 
hours. Wasted time, is it not time gained ? 

Madame Threestars has a sister-in-law who is 
very devout. They bear the same name in 



Life in Paris. 119 

society, having married brothers, with the differ- 
ence that one is Countess and the other Vis- 
countess. Now the latter, who is the devout 
one, is not quite all she might seem. She goes 
to confessional frequently, and it is reasonable 
to suppose she has a good deal to confess. It is 
rumored very quietly that she has gone some- 
what too far — to find material for confession. 
Do you know what the result of this will be in 
the outside world, when this little scandal begins 
to be whispered ? The only one mentioned will 
be Madame la Comtesse, who has nothing to do 
with it, but whose name, already famous for her 
coquetries, will attract to her the whispers circu- 
lating about her sister-in-law's adventure. From 
this you may draw your own moral for or against 
flirtation. Which is worth most in the world, 
the approval of your own conscience or of public 
opinion ? 

Why should I not talk to you here about two 
painters of nature who have at last attained 
their apotheoses — Millet and Chintreuil ? It is 
because they are dead, of course. It is always 
so in France. The aureole never shines but 






J 



I20 Life in Paris. 

over the grave. As long as a man is alive they 
seem afraid to give him his crown. No one cares 
for his poverty, for Chintreuil and Millet may 
almost be said to have starved. Dying of per- 
sistent toil, with poverty always on the threshold 
— is this not dying of hunger? You probably 
have in New York pictures of these admirable 
artists, who both understood nature, the one 
poetically, the other trutlifully, but both with the 
profound sentiment of sincere masters. They 
did not play with the surface like those who seek 
only for effects. They looked for the soul of 
things. Their trees and their grasses think and 
love in the impulse which God has given in 
creating the world. It is the universal love, 
fruitful and holy, perpetuating the mystery of 
the infinite. 

Yes, as a critic has said, life was hard to Chin- 
treuil as to Millet ; but harder still to the former, 
for he never felt the recompense of renown. 
Death is terrible to those who feel themselves 
scarcely arrived at the maturity of their talents. 
But after all, the recompense of those who are 
moved by a passion for the beautiful does not 



Life in Paris. 121 

lie in praise ; it is in their efforts to draw near 
the ideal which they pursue. Where would you 
find one among the most unhappy of them who 
would change fates with Rothschild ? Chintreuil 
had the faith of an apostle. To come nearer to 
nature he made himself, primitive, like the Eng- 
lish pre-Raphaelites. Of course, when he came 
into the world of art with a new manner, he was 
not understood, so fixed in us is the bad habit 
of not changing our habits. Yet who had ever 
discovered, as he had, the rain and the sun play- 
ing together in a universal harmony of contrasts ? 
Paul de St. Victor has well described — but too 
late — this charming painter : " Dawns and twi- 
lights, storms and mists, prairies and forests, 
river sides and the heart of groves, parks and 
gardens, plains specked with crows, flowing 
M^aters where fawns come to drink, heather and 
flowering broom, beaches and open seas, rocks 
and cliffs, the whole poem of nature is here 
intoned in stanzas often incomplete, often merely 
sketched, but each with its own melancholy or 
charm, its note grave or tender, its impression 
winning or sincere." 



122 Life in Paris. 

Chintreuil sought rather the musical than the 
picturesque sensation, because he arrived at na- 
ture through emotion, rather than through admira- 
tion. He never wished to see her but at melan- 
choly hours, in the twilight or before a storm. 
His sky is never in full light. He loved clouds, 
as if they revealed the thought of nature. Poor 
Millet, who has just died, loved nature in any 
guise, so long as there were peasants in the 
scene. He painted morning, noon, or evening, 
whatever the state of the sky — resolved to see 
the truth and paint it. 

Just now nobody talks of anything but Millet 
and Chintreuil. Unhappily, we shall soon join 
to these names in their week's celebrity, that of 
Corot, which did not become famous until the 
great landscape painter had passed his sixtieth 
year. Corot is going to die ! The Academy of 
Fine Arts will then recognize all its wrongs to- 
wards him, as towards Millet and Chintreuil. 
When we remember that these three painters 
are not Academicians, we try to think who repre- 
sents nature there. It is only recently that 
Corot has begun to sell his pictures. Before 



Life ifi Paris. 123 

that he lived in poverty, almost like his two 
comrades — although he had some fortune from 
his father. But he gave away most of his income. 
One day, to reward a young servant who was very 
gentle and obedient, he said to her, "I will paint 
thy portrait." He did not make her beautiful, 
but he made her charming — a face of great 
originality. The young servant was not pleased 
with it because it was "not like other folks." 
Her lover, a dealer in picture frames, offered 
her twenty francs for the portrait. She thought 
it was too much, and would only take ten francs. 
Who would believe it? — that picture remained 
more than a year in the frame maker's window, 
unsold at the price of $25, and he let it go at 
last for $20. The man who bought it sold it 
again for $40. To-day one of our great amateurs 
offers 10,000 francs for this portrait, a dowry for 
the servant girl if she had kept it. Corot said 
to her one morning, " What have you done with 
your portrait ? " She answered that her lover, 
who was jealous, had taken it away from her. 
But Corot knew the story. He said, " You great 
simpleton, I must pay for your stupidity," and 



124 Life in Paris. 

gave her a landscape out of his dusty studio. 
" Now, this time you must wait till I am dead 
before you sell it." The great simpleton prom- 
ised with tears in her eyes. But — such is the 
human heart — ever since Corot's life was des- 
paired of, the great simpleton is already trying 
to " trade off" the landscape. Which shows that 
it is not worth while to reward stupidity. 

Enough of painting — or you will end by say- 
ing, whenever you see my name, in the words of 
the placards on freshly-whitewashed gates, 
"Take care of the paint." 

There was dancing yesterday at the Countess 
Duchatel's, whose salon bears something the 
same relation to Orleanist society as that of the 
Princess Mathilde to the Bonapartist. Naturally, 
one meets at Madame Duchatel's the princes of 
the Orleanist family; but, as at the Princess 
Mathilde's you may find Orleanists in truancy, 
so at Madame Duchatel's there are Bonapartists 
who think that politics should be left in the 
cloak-room. They are perfectly right ; one does 
not go into society to conspire. One goes for 
the nobler object of showing one's clothes or 



Life in Paris. 125 

passing the time. Therefore, day before yester- 
day, at the Venetian fete which I gave, I made 
of my hotel a neutral ground where all parties 
came together. It was the veritable coalition of 
the two Centres ; it was even a meeting of the 
two Extremes — for it is known that extremes 
meet. It seemed perfectly natural that well-bred 
men like the Comte de Paris and Marshal Can- 
robert, Gen. Fleur}^ and Admiral Pothuau should 
meet at the same moment before a domino or 
before a picture. I had every shade of party : 
Gen. Turr, who captured Naples, and Gen. 
Bosco, who defended it ; the Minister of Greece 
and the Ambassadeur of Turkey ; the Comte 
d'Haussonville and Alexandre Dumas, his 
victim, crowned with the flowers of the Acad- 
emy. 

The American world was there entirely at 
home. It is known that I have, in a manner, 
naturalized myself with my pen in the United 
States, so that they shook hands with me like 
fellow-citizens. The New World rivalled the Old 
in brilliancy of costume ; it was dazzling. When 
any one recognized an Americaine by her accent 



126 Life ifi Paris. 

he would say, " I am not cheated here — this one 
is pretty." 

There was wit in every corner. All trouble 
in this respect was taken from the master of the 
house. What charming things were caught on 
the wing. A lovely Marquise, disguised as a 
Devil, said to the Comte de Paris, " Would you 
like to be King, ]\Ionseigneur? " " No," he re- 
plied, '' for then you would not tell me the truth." 

A Princess said to me as she took leave, " The 
best word of the evening was said to me by my 
little boy before I came away. " Mamma, why 
do you disguise yourself when you are so pretty t 
Take care, or God might condemn you to wear a 
mask always, to punish you. Come to bed with 
me, and send your domino to my aunt ; she is 
ugly ! " The Princess added, " I am going to 
wake up the dear child to show him that God 
has not sentenced me to wear a mask always." 



Life itt Paris. 



127 




ARDENT ACTRESSES — A WIFE's VENGEANCE — ^A 
COSSACK PRINCESS — OLGA DE JANINA — KITE 

FLYING IN PARIS M. DE ROTHSCHILD's LITTLE 

JOKE. 

Paris, March 15, 1875. 
|N America, when you have a fire, you 
burn up a city. In Paris, when you 
hear the cry of fire, it is generally an 
actress's wardrobe. The number of comediennes 
I have seen burned out is incredible. People 
take advantage of their ardent natures to argue 
that they set their own dwellings on fire. 
Aurelien Scholl, the Champfort of our Parisian 
journalists, said yesterday in his chronicle, 
" There is nothing new — Mademoiselle Las- 
seny has not been burned out this week, nor 
any of her sort." The last fire consumed 300,- 
000 francs worth of furniture for Mile. Lasseny, 
whose apartment in the Place Vendome was 
like an earthly paradise, after the apples were 



128 Life in Paris, 

eaten. The insurance companies are loud in 
clamor, but the public answers, Why do you 
insure actresses then? Has not Mile. Sarah 
Bernhardt been burned out twice ? Draw your 
wallets and pay like gentlemen ! You know you 
are dealing with imprudent beauties who go to 
bed late and never blow out their candles. Do 
you dare accuse the princesses of the stage of 
arson ? Take care they don't make you pay half 
a million or so damages for assailing their honor. 
When a journalist asks damages for slander they 
give him four or five dollars to patch up his 
wounded reputation. But in the case of an 
actress you can't give too much, because there is 
so much repairing to be done. 

Far be it from me to accuse these theatrical 
ladies seriously of setting these fireworks in 
operation at their homes. At bottom they are 
" honest fellows," if not honest women. Besides, 
Mile. Lasseny, having allowed her dogs, which 
she adored, to be burned in the conflagration, 
has given the best proof that there was no pre- 
meditation. If the fire had destroyed merely 
her lovers, we might be permitted to doubt. 



Life in Paris. 129 

We have in Paris a great lady, a foreigner, 
who goes into societ}' with an unblushing front, 
and who, nevertheless, has committed that in- 
human crime — a woman who has set her husband 
on fire. The story may be worth telling. There 
is an extenuating circumstance. The husband 
did not love his wife. Why did he marry her, 
then .'* In America a man sees a pretty girl with 
no money and marries her, saying that beauty is 
the same as specie ; and he is right. In Europe 
he sees an ugly woman draped in bank-notes and 
marries her, saying there is no happiness without 
money ; and he is wrong. This is what Count 

d'H did : He took Mademoiselle Armande 

O because of the million she incumbered. 

But he had reckoned without his host. Mile. 

O was a character. She was not to be trifled 

with. She at once took high ground with her 
husband. " Monsieur," she said to him in full 
honeymoon, which in this case was la lune rousse^ 
" I know you have a liaison which controls you, 
but I will let you know you are not to control me. 
If you behave as a gentleman I will pardon you 
for the sums that connection has already cost 

9 



130 Life in Paris. 

you and me. But if I find you only married me 
for my million I will be revenged." The husband 
accepted all her revenges with philosophic calm- 
ness, and continued to waste her substance. 
When dignity has fled from a house its inmates 
are no longer man and woman — they are merely 
criminals and maniacs. In this unhappy mar- 
riage they came — shall I say it ? — even to blows. 
Violence took the place of insult. The husband 
talked of a separation of person and goods. 
"Ah, yes !" said the lady, "I understand. You 
wish a separation of persons, having made way 
with the goods." " Yes," said the husband coldly. 
" That does not suit me," said the wife. " You 
have killed my heart, my reason, my honor ; and 
now I shall have your life." 

Count d'H tried to laugh at her. " But, 

Madame, why should you wish my death when I 
ask nothing better than to leave you .'' " " Because 
that is my only possible revenge." " Nonsense, 
my dear. Cowards and women revenge them- 
selves, and you are neither. It must be that you 
want to marry again." "Why not. Sir.-* I have 
been very little married with you." This charm- 



Life in Paris. 131 

ing conjugal conversation ended with the usual 
climax of endearment a la Sganarelle. The wife 
had the bitterer tongue, the husband the heavier 
fist. The lady retired, beaten but not satisfied, 
and resolved to be rid of her husband. But how 
to go about it ? She was not strong enough to 
use the poniard, and she revolted at the cowardice 
of poison. This is what took place. One even- 
ing she found him in bed reading a letter in a 
woman's handwriting. In a sudden rage she set 
his curtains on fire and ran away, locking the 
door on the outside. He screamed Fire, but the 
servants were too far to hear him. It was hor- 
rible. He ran frantically about the room. The 
Chamber was upholstered in Louis XV. cretonne, 
which instantly took fire from the bed. M. 

d'H at last got to a window, and as he was 

about to throw himself out, his wife took pity and 
opened the door, asking what was the matter 
with a look of innocent surprise. The husband's 
life was saved, but his disfigurement was 
complete. 

The case has been much talked about, and 
there are those who do not hesitate to defend the 



132 Life in Paris. 

wife. They accuse the husband of having tor- 
mented, deceived, and ruined his wife. When 
the court ordered their separation there was only- 
left to her some three or four thousand francs a 
year of her fortune, with which she can make 
very little figure in the world. But the husband 
will show to still less advantage with his scarred 
and seamed cheeks and forehead. It is sad to 
carry into the world the scars received at home. 
We have another strong-minded woman in 
Paris — Madame Olga de Janina, who is making 
a frightful noise. She came to see me yesterday, 
with a priest ! Here is her history, as she gives 
it, in a few words. She is a Don Cossack, with 
all the wildness of that desert country. She is 
part faun and part centaur, with blood of fire. 
There are women of whom you never think with- 
out a prayer-book under their arm ; this one 
always has a horse whip in her hand. A Prin- 
cess upon the banks of the Don, she is at present 
merely a pianist and novelist. She plays the 
piano like Liszt, and writes novels like George 
Sand, when George Sand wrote Elle et Lui. In 
her famous book, Les Souvenirs d^une Cosaque, 



Life in Paris. 133 

she relates with an incredible tranquillity of spirit, 
her adventures with Abbe Liszt — the famous 
Liszt of the salons. The illustrious pianist had 
flung himself into the Church to escape from the 
women, for he was not a hardened sinner. But 
Mme. Olga de Janina, who had disembarrassed 
herself of her huaband, took Liszt without cere- 
mony out of his sanctuary. The penitent became 
impenitent again. For three years Liszt went on 
squandering his share in Paradise in company 
with this rose-garlanded demon. Mme. Olga de 
Janina assured me in the presence of the priest, 
who was not listening, that she spent in these 
escapades with the Abbe Liszt three millions of 
francs — a million a year. I believe a great deal 
was spent in charity. The devil had his share 
and the poor had theirs. But how the money was 
thrown out of the window ! For instance, they 
drew upon the celebrated garden cultivated by 
Alphonse Karr, for cart-loads of Parmese violets 
to strew the path of the great pianist, whether he 
happened to be a Pesth, at Venice, or at Rome. 
They kept open house for all the eccentrics of 
Europe. If Olga de Janina had been merely a 



134 Life in Paris. . 

simple mortal, Liszt would have declined such 
publicit}'' with her. But a Princess from the 
banks of the Don — that was original and princely. 
This fine train of life could not last always. 
Liszt loves life at full speed ; the good man is no 
anchorite. He is a saint of Sybaris and not of 
Bethlehem. Olga de Janina became finally a 
crumpled rose leaf. They separated when the 
three millions were gone, he to return to the 
church, and she to pursue her fantastic destiny. 

All I have here told you is the narrative of 
this haughty Cossack, who has hurled herself 
like a thunderbolt among us. She cannot take 
a step without raising a storm. She thinks her 
riding-whip is a sceptre, and so is afraid of 
nothing. She gives a cut with it as another 
would shake hands. She came to me to ask me 
to act as her second in a duel. I said I would 
if they were to fight with roses, and recalled to 
her the fable where Jupiter, wishing to punish a 
demi-goddess who had been playing the man, 
ordered her to be whipped with roses. I put 
myself on guard against a blow with the whip, 
but as she is well up in her classics, she laughed 



Life in Paris, 



135 



and shook hands. It is a pity she has so much 
of the devil in her ; for she has a really wonder- 
ful talent. It is Liszt himself at the piano ; the 
same energy, the s^luiq furia, the same virtuosity. 
She gives the piano a soul, as Orpheus gave one 
to his lyre. No one would imagine the strength 
of this woman, who is as thin as Sarah Bernhardt. 
You will see her some day in America, for the 
Old World is too little for her. 

But it is wasting time talking of music just 
now. The only fashionable harmony is the 
jingling of gold. There is a rage of speculation. 
Since the Spanish Mobilier started from 500 
francs to rise to 1500, the capital stock amount- 
ing to 120,000,000, the result is that the stock 
operators have made 240,000,000 in a few days 
on these securities alone. Therefore, everybody 
is crazy for his share in the golden shower. 
The Bourse is invaded by an entirely new public. 
The young Creves who have devoured their for- 
tunes in the Quartier Bredad want to repair them 
with one stroke at the Bourse. The young ladies 
of the Half-World are equally eager to try the 
hazards of the game. They are not allowed to 



136 Life in Paris. 

enter the Bourse, but they drive in their coupes 
all around the building. It is comical to see 
these little powdered faces leaning out of the 
carriage-windows to give their orders. They 
call them Bankeresses. The curb-stone brokers 
now wear v/hite cravats, and talk of "our lady 
clients." This will soon end by the ruin of these 
ladies. But the men will have to pay for it. 

The great financiers pass with mien unaltered 
amid these revolutions of the speculators ; they 
have hard heads which the games of the Bourse 
cannot intoxicate. And speaking of this reminds 
me of a story which paints the portrait of old 
Baron Rothschild. They were playing at Mar- 
quis d'Aligre's, a genuine financier's game, that 
is to say, for very small stakes. The Marquis 
was losing. He threw alouis on the table, which 
rolled on the floor. The Marquis d'Aligre 
dropped on all-fours to look for his money, dis- 
turbing everybody and delaying the game. 
Baron de Rothschild was dealing. " A louis 
lost!" he said, " that is worth looking for ; " and 
putting on an expression of deep anxiety, he 
rolled up a thousand france note, lighted it at 



Life in Faris. 



137 



the candle, and held it to assist Marquis d'Aligre 
in his search. The whole character of the old 
gentleman was in this action. He was terribly 
avaricious of his pennies, but he would sacrifice 
a thousand-f ranee note to do any one a favor or 
get a laugh on him. 




138 Life in Paris. 




A DAY AT LONGCHAMPS — THE NEW AND THE 

OLD PILGRIMAGES EDGAR QUINET HISTORIAN 

AND POET AMEDEE ACHARD A PIOUS 

DUELLIST. 

Paris, March 22, 1875. 
HAVE just returned from the races 
at Longchamps, where more than one 
of your countrywomen appeared to- 
day as leaders of the fashion. Formerly America 
used to come to Paris to take lessons of grace 
and dash ; but to-day she comes to dictate her 
modish laws. The time will come when the 
typical Parisiennes will be American women. 

We have almost always here a Holy Week 
framed in tempests, of rain or hail or snow. It 
seems as if heaven wished to give the earth a 
white resurrection robe after the penance of 
Lent. This year, however, we have had a radiant 
sunshine, which shows a good intelligence be- 
tween heaven and earth, due, perhaps, to the late 
change in the Cabinet. The chesnut-trees are 



Life in Paris. 139 

about to bloom. The flowers of Easter opened 
under the most beautiful sun of silver. Nature, 
though shivery still, ventures to loosen her zone. 
Like the fair maid of Ovid, the leaves and flowers 
blossom in her hands. Her blonde locks scatter 
the perfume of the hawthorn and the primrose. 
She is crowned with two red branches of the 
Judea-tree and two of the white lilac. She treads 
the green carpet of the springing wheat; she 
wears in her bosom a spray of peach blossoms ; 
she breathes in passing on the snowy boughs of 
the apple-trees, and smiles to see it is not the 
frost that covers them with silver. 

I saw all nations in the Champs Elysees and 
the Bois de Boulogne. The pilgrimage to Long- 
champs still exists, with plenty of pilgrims though 
there is no Abbey. It was the opening spectacle 
of the Spring. The women smiled like roses, 
though some were hidden in their coupes like 
violets. You must not think we are less Catholic 
now than in the days of the Abbey, for it was, 
after all,- no more than a succursal of the opera. 
There is a letter extant of St. Vincent de Paul, 
in which he reproaches the nuns there with wear- 



140 Life in Paris. 

ing perfumed Spanish gloves and flame-colored 
ribbons. But that is only a beginning. For, if 
we can believe him, the doors of the cells were 
left open at night. So, when Mademoiselle Le 
Maure, of the Opera, took the vail at Longchamps, 
she made no change in her habits. Her admirers 
of the green-room came to the convent and en- 
joyed her singing all the same in the Thiebers. 
The chronicles of the eighteenth century are 
full of Longchamps. Who has forgotten the 
tradition of the four horses harnessed with gold 
and silk which drew the coach of La Guimard, 
followed by that of La Duthe, a silver couch of 
Venus? In 1785 an Englishman was seen at 
Longchamps with a coach whose wheels glittered 
with precious stones. His horses were shod 
with silver set with rubies and emeralds. 

The Aristophanesque comedy was to-day re- 
placed by a New Year's pantomime. Carriage- 
loads of maskers passed by, scattering their jests, 
their concetti, their grains of attic salt or lumps 
of stupidity. Jeannot saluted with his red cap 
or looked with a lantern for a rosiere. Cadet 
Roussel, dressed in gray paper, philosophized 



Life in Paris. 141 

good-naturedly. The servant of Moliere asked 
for a certificate of slack-jaw, recounting all sorts 
of scandalous stories of the fashionable world, 
sometimes with the figure of Dorine and again 
with the affected airs of a Precieuse. 

Do you know why Longchamps exists no 
longer ? It is because it exists continually. The 
Hosannah has changed to a Hurrah, and horses 
are the saints of the new calendar. Formerly 
people came from every point of France to as- 
sist at the ceremonies of Longchamps. Now, 
nobody takes the trouble to go, except those who 
are out for an airing. The fashion journals will 
tell you what there is new under the sun of Long- 
champs. That is not my affair. I have already 
spoken to you of the great dress question. Un- 
fortunately, it seems that the new fashions re- 
quire still more material than ever. When the 
Creator made woman. He placed in her umbra- 
geous dressing-room fig leaves and vine leaves 
against the day when coquetry should lead her 
to finery. Dresses in those days ruined no hus- 
bands, but the women were not less fair when 
they bathed their bare feet in the dew, with only 



142 Life in Paris. 

their hair for umbrellas. But there came a time 
when it was decided that the business of women 
was to spin wool. Soon she had slaves to turn 
her spinning-wheel, and already the poets began 
their tirades. But it was far worse when the 
women passed from wool to silk, and then began 
to embroider figures and flowers in gold. The 
prices of the dresses of ancient queens and 
courtesans already made a pretty contrast with 
that of the fig leaf. But at least, in antiquity and 
the middle ages, a fine dress lasted a long time. 
The historians tell us that gala robes reappeared 
on every great occasion ; the dresses of great 
grandmothers were proudly worn. To-day our 
queens and courtesans wear their gowns but once. 
They would think themselves dishonored if they 
did not change their clothes every day, even as 
nature changes its vesture. 

Let us talk of something more serious. 

The funeral processions succeed each other 
rapidly. The great generation is passing away. 
Edgar Quinet followed close upon Ledru-Rollin. 
He died suddenly as if he were falling asleep, 
after more than half a century of labor. You 



Life in Paris. 143 

might say of him that he was a working man of 
thought who never rested for Sunday. For men 
of letters and for statesmen there is no repose 
but in the grave. No man has set more ideas in 
motion in the domain of philosophy than this 
restless thinker, who died without finding his 
philosopher's stone. He wished to be eveiy- 
thing, but he discovered that man was nothing, 
no more than a reed bending under the hand of 
destiny, but at least, like the thinking reed of 
Pascal, always rising towards God. Edgar 
Quinet was profoundly religious. In his fine 
book on the Revolution, he sees that what de- 
stroyed the men of that time was their denial of 
religion. There can be no society without wor- 
ship, any more than there can be harvests with- 
out sun. The idea of God is the sun of the 
soul. 

Edgar Quinet had shared in all the emotions 
of France since Napoleon I. to our day. He 
assisted in the ardor of youth at the fall of the 
first Empire, at the Restoration of the Bourbons, 
at the revival of Greece. He was in the Ro- 
mantic revolt j he fought against the Government 



L 



144 Life in Paris, 

of July. He belonged to the Constituent As- 
sembly of 1848. The coup d^etat gave him the 
long leisure of exile. He only returned to 
France at the last revolution which made him a 
representative of the people, but a representative 
rather too platonic. Latterly he sat with folded 
arms, recognizing that the march of humanity is 
slow. When I speak of folded arms I refer to 
the politician, for the man of letters died pen in 
hand, under the eyes of his wife, the daughter 
of a Moldavian poet, a true literary man's wife, 
enthusiastic and devoted, with spots of ink on 
her fingers. 

If Edgar Quinet had been content with being 
a great poet, he would have gained a wider fame. 
But the demon of politics carried him away to 
the mountain. How much time he lost, trying 
to reform the world before it was time ! This is 
also the case with Victor Hugo, though he, with 
a surer instinct, early withdrew from the storm, 
in the company of the Muses. Politics steal 
away no more of his time. When he dies the 
world will be surprised to learn how much he 
leaves behind. Philosophy dominated Quinet 



Life in Paris. 145 

too young. He was always synthetic^ whether as 
poet in his Napoleon or his Wandering ^ew, or 
as historian in his history of the Revolution. 
Will his fame endure — this great mind and brave 
heart? Perhaps the mysterious spark was 
lacking. 

At the same time died Agricol Perdiguier, who 
was also a representative of the people ; and 
whom Georges Sand took as a type in her Tour 
de France. In those days Georges Sand was also 
a socialist because it was the fashion. If she 
were young now, she would wear a dress with an 
exaggerated train. She drew Perdiguier as the 
journeyman carpenter working in a castle and 
turning the Chatelaine's head. He had plenty 
of natural wit. Some one said in his presence, 
" I like the Republic, but I don't like Repub- 
licans." " Why not say," he cried, " that you 
like apples, but are opposed to apple-trees." 

Amedee Achard is also dead, a charming 
story-teller and a gentlemanly journalist. He 
was better than his work, in wit and grace and 
fascination. His pen never rightly rendered him. 
He once had a famous duel with Fiorentino. 

10 



146 Life in Paris. 

Neither of them knew how to handle a sword, 
Achard was run through and thought to be killed. 
Fiorentino fell upon his knees ; they thought it 
was to weep over Achard. But — horrible pro- 
fanation ! — it was to thank the Holy Virgin for 
allowing him to kill his man ! Achard came to 
himself and cast a glance of evil meaning on 
Fiorentino, who died soon after in good earnest. 
Their friends are now wondering whether 
they have met. 




Life in Paris. 147 




THE AMERICAN AND THE FRENCH VIEW OF LIFE 

HOUSES, HOSTELRIES, AND TOMBS — THE WAY 

NEWSPAPERS ARE MADE IN FRANCE PERSON- 
ALS OF FIGARO SAVANTS AND HORSES A 

SURPRISE PARTY. 

Paris, March 28, 1875. 
HO said that we were becoming Prus- 
sianized ? We never had anything in 
common with the spirit of Berlin. 
Prussia took our philosophers away from us 
in the eighteenth century, and she has taken 
two provinces from us in these times. But 
she has never been able to impose her habits 
upon us. Has she fashions ? We know nothing 
about it. Her family virtues are not ours. 
In one word, the sun does not rise for us on 
that side. We have imitated the English a 
good deal, having begun with the Greeks 
and Romans, the Spaniards and the Italians. 
To-day it is America which is teaching us our 
paces in many respects. We are attempting 



148 Life in Paris. 

her boldness and enterprise in our industrial 
and financial undertakings. America has the 
genius of those great operations which move the 
world. She leaves the mark of her footstep 
everywhere. If America has not yet had her 
philosophers like Plato or Descartes, like Aristo- 
tle or J. J. Rousseau, she possesses what is much 
better, the philosophy of human life. For in- 
stance, the Americans have the good sense to 
know that man is not eternal on the earth. He 
passes, he plants his flag, and does not bother 
about his epitaph. " Here lies a man who 
worked " is the best of funeral orations. For 
the American, life is a voyage, the earth is a 
hostelry ; while for the Frenchman life is an 
everlasting habit of always doing the same thing. 
They therefore establish themselves on the earth 
as if they were never going to leave it. The 
houses they build can never seem solid enough 
to shelter their fragile lives. M. Thiers, philoso- 
pher as he is, and 78 years of age, is rebuilding 
his hotel burned by the Commune with a watch- 
ful care which occupies several hours of every 
day. He is anxious to get into it by next winter, 



Life in Paris. 149 

but he admits that it will be several years before 
he is completely at home in it ! 

To be " at home " is usually considered wis- 
dom, but is there not also a certain amount of 
folly in it ? How often have I heard people in 
France say, " We shall not be happy until our 
house is built." There is a Moslem proverb, 
"To build your house is to build your tomb." 
In fact, in every new house a sacrifice must be 
made to Death, the only mythological deity 
which survives. How many of these sacrifices I 
have seen in the temples built by Parisians to 
their pride ! 

Meanwhile, America is building up the world, 
or rather she says that her house is the universe. 
There is one thing that we are trying to borrow 
from America, and that is the art of making a 
newspaper. In Paris we are mere school-boys, 
and idlers as well. When we have read the papers 
we know no more than before. We must go into 
society, on 'Change, or on the boulevard to learn 
the news, while the reporters of the daily papers 
are playing dominoes in the cafes. Do you 
want to know how a paper is made here } It is 



150 Life i?t Paris. 

very simple : the journals make themselves out 
of one another. The scissors do far more than 
the pen. Paragraphs out of the evening papers 
become articles in the morning papers, and the 
reverse. You discuss with your opponent a 
political question already discussed a thousand 
times, and a thousand times more muddled at 
the end than the beginning. Darkness instead 
of light is thrown upon it. A Prefect of the 
the Fourth of September, who was as good a 
Prefect as he had been journalist, recounted, 
while dining with me at the Chateau de Breuil — 
for it was the Prefect of Laon — how, one morn- 
ing, seeing that all his associates had gone off 
to a civil funeral, he decided to make the paper 
by himself. He scissored away at the other 
papers so much and so well, that he needed only 
a line of invention here and there to reduce to 
harmony these heterogeneous ideas gathered 
from every side. The paper came out at four 
o'clock, and at five, his editor-in-chief, who had 
been to make a speech at the civil funeral, came 
to congratulate him, saying the paper had never 
been so complete or so interesting. Since that 



Life in Paris. 151 

time the editor-in-chief has followed no other 
system. 

Perhaps you imagine in reading our papers 
that all those fine things leap alive from the brain 
of Minerva. They have usually existed at least 
a hundred times the life of the rose, and are 
taken up and turned inside out for the occasion. 
For instance, M. Emile de Girardin has always 
a highly interrogative article ready for any possi- 
ble event. We call this reserved wit. 

For several months the Figaro has been 
taking on a Franco- American character. It has 
started a page of advertisements which is very 
amusing to Frenchmen, and especially to French- 
women. You have doubtless seen this innova- 
tion of the Greeks of Paris. I suppose the 
Postmaster-General will soon be asking for a 
new tax upon this style of correspondence which 
dispenses with the mails. For instance, one 
meets a lady with a spray of white lilac in her 
corsage. If he is a Don Juan he salutes her, 
proves that he knows her, and begs to inhale the 
fragrance of her lilacs. But if he is a timid man, 
he declares his adoration in the Figaro. Now, 



152 Life in Paris. 

as fifty women probably wore lilacs in their 
bosoms at the same moment, you may fancy the 
embarrassment of the timid man if the whole 
fifty answer. Amateurs and impertinents also in- 
tervene. In answer to the question, " Why this 
si] ence ? " somebody answers, " Why this recol- 
lection ? " There are enough idle people who 
are willing to pay a louis for their joke. For in- 
stance, apropos to the departure of a man too 
much appreciated in his quarter, a woman writes : 
"There was seen yesterday a long procession of 
widows with large black vails. They were the 
relics of Destenque of the Folies-Marigny, on 
their way to the Eastern Railway. ' When will 
he return ? ' was the sobbing chorus. The loco- 
motives started back in dismay." 

We have two important conventions now in 
session, the savants' and the horses'. Of the 
latter the Marquis de Mornay is President. 
Among the Committee are the Comte de Juigne, 
Vicompte Aguado, Marquis de Castelbajac, 
Due de Lesparre, Compte Roederer. Baron A. 
de Rothschild and Prince d'Aremberg. They 
are scattering ribbons at both places, but you 



Life in Paris. 153 

will easily understand that " all Paris " is much 
more interested in the horse show than in the Sci- 
entific Convention. In the first place the music 
is better at the Palais de I'lndustrie than at the 
Sorbonne, and there is more amusement in 
every way. To-day there was a reception with 
full orchestra. During the week we will see 
light carriage horses, Victoria horses for Park 
and for hunting, heavy carriage and saddle 
horses. And floods of ribbons of which the 
horses seem very proud. Francis I. said, " My 
horse has more pride than I." Saturday there 
is to be a military carrousel by the schools of 
the Staff and of St. Cyr. Crowds of English 
cross the channel for this occasion. This is 
entirely natural, for it is from them we derive our 
hippie inspiration. But the English do not go 
at all to the solemnity of the Sorbonne, where 
the Minister will show that we are the first 
savants of the world, and that the Transit year 
is one of the most glorious epochs of civilization. 
These poor old sages seem to imagine that 
Venus crossed the sun to please them. 

Death has let our great men alone during the 



154 



Life in Paris, 



past week. We have lost a comedian-sculptor 
of the Boulevard du Crime, named Melingue. 
He was a great gamin of Paris, witty, sarcastic 
and unexpected, full of deviltry. He led a 
quiet life in an oasis of Belleville, never caring 
for the revolutionary volcano always at his door. 
His wife was of course a comedienne, Mile. 
Theodorine. They had long been in love with- 
out confessing it, thinking themselves unworthy 
of each other. It was a comedy within the 
comedy, for they played lovers on the stage 
every night. One day a friend said to Melingue. 
" Why don't you marry Theodorine ? " " With 
all my heart ; but she would not look at me. 
She plays queens as if she were one." The 
friend went to see Theodorine. "Would you 
marry Melingue ? " " He would never think of 
me, playing kings as he does.'* The King mar- 
ried the Queen, and they had many children. 

Among the Americans in Paris is Mr. Selig- 
mann, a banker of great note in the Bourse. 
He receives a great deal, gives good dinners 
and has no enmity to the dance. But he likes a 
decent interval between the balls. His friends 



\ 



Life in Paris. 155 

grew tired of waiting the other day, and this was 
the result. Coming home from his club at 
II o'clock — with the military puncuality of a 
family man — he was surprised to see his street 
filled with carriages. " The neighborhood seems 
to be lively," he said to himself. Entering his 
own house he was assailed by a crowd of mask- 
ers, who seized him and dragged him into the 
brilliantly lighted parlors. They complimented 
him in prose and verse for having given so 
beautiful a party. He could not believe his 
senses. They persuaded him that he had sent 
out his invitations and forgotten it. He took 
the adventure gayly and entered into the spirit 
of the affair saying, " You can't imagine how 
charming it is to give a ball without knowing it." 
His young daughter, who is lovely as the day, 
threw herself on his neck and said, " You know 
happiness comes in dancing." 

If you want to know more about it, my dear 
American readers, you should read a book called 
Les Milk et une units Parisiennes. It is brand 
new, will appear to-morrow and is signed. 

Arsene Houssaye, 



156 



Life m Paris. 




A VOYAGE IN THE AIR — VICTOR HUGO'S ROCK — 
M. THIERS' BIRTHDAY — THE CHINESE IN NA- 
TURE AND THE CHINESE IN FIRE-SCREENS 

SPINDLES AND GILDED PAUNCHES THE VASE 

OF FORTUNY AND THE VASE OF CLOVIS TWO 

WEDDINGS MR. WASHBURNE'S QUADRILLE. 

Paris, April i8, 1875. 
RANGE, at this moment, is more oc- 
cupied with heaven than with earth. 
Two aerial navigators, MM. Croce 
Spinelli and Sivel have just paid with their 
lives for their attempt against the unknown. 
They wished to ascend beyond 8000 meters, but 
it appears that the Kingdom of Heaven is re- 
served to the gods, and forbidden to man ; hence 
two more noble victims of science. 

This time we have marked the limits of aerial 
geography. A voyage in the clouds is decidedly 
more dangerous than one at sea. The Academi- 
cians will not fail to compare the two intrepid 
explorers to Icarus jealous of Phcebus. 



Life in Paris. 157 

Three started. Happily one of the three re- 
turned to write his impressions of the journey. 
This is M. Tissandier, the chemist, who wanted 
to pass the sky through his crucible. He noted, 
minute by minute, the variations of the atmos- 
phere. At 6,000 meters everything went well. 
At 6,500 meters they breathed with some 
oppression ; their hands were almost frozen. 
Arriving at about 7,000 meters they were com- 
pelled to breathe oxygen. Sivel and Croce 
closed their eyes, half dead with cold, but they 
became accustomed to it at last. Even in their 
distress the three companions were gay. The 
last word of Croce, who was looking at Tissan- 
dier and trying to smile, was, " You blow like a 
porpoise." 

Tissandier at least had strength enough to 
blow. He still wrote his impressions : " We 
are at 7,000 meters. Sivel appears lethargic. 
Sival and Croce are pale, pale, pale ; 7,500 
meters, Sivel is throwing out ballast." At this 
terrible moment neither of the three passengers 
retained his liberty of action; asphyxia had 
begun. It is by miracle that Tissandier recov- 



L. 



158 Life in Paris. 

ered from it. There are many who come back 
to us from a distance, but none who come from 
such a height. But I think there is no danger of 
a crowd of imitators presenting themselves to 
scale heaven. There is prospect of coloniza- 
tion everywhere, except in the clouds. 

Victor Hugo is wiser. He attempts every 
research of the human spirit with no other 
balloon and no other ship than his imagination, 
and for all that he arrives at the zenith. He 
has, however, recently ventured on a strip of 
ocean. He has made a trip to Guernsey. 
There are days when he asks himself whether 
Paris is not an exile for him, for his house at 
Guernsey has retained a good part of his heart. 
It is there that he has written half of his beau- 
tiful books. It is there that he has enjoyed the 
fullest communion with God and nature, with 
the sky and sea. He calls Guernsey his, " Rock 
of Saint Helena " — which is rather ambitious. 
His friend Dumas once said to him, " There is 
something good on this rock." Dumas was 
looking at Juliette, the Egeria of Victor Hugo ; 
" Here is a Hudson Lowe with chains of roses." 



Life in Paris. 159 

The old are always young in France. Victor 
Hugo works with the fire of twenty years at the 
second series of the " Legends of the Ages." 
Thiers never rests for an hour. His repose is 
simply to pass from one work to another. I 
went yesterday to make my compliment upon his 
79th birthday. He was radient in his circle of 
friends. Nobody could talk but himself. He 
once said of Janin, " He has such a habit of wri- 
ting his feuilleton without thinking about it, 
that he will still do it when he is dead." One 
might say of M. Thiers, " He will still be an ad- 
mirable talker, after having given up the ghost." 
The Count Apponyi, Ambassador of Austria, 
came in. Perhaps you m.ay think that they 
talked politics. Everybody listened, hoping to 
pick up some word about the mysterious inter- 
view at Venice, where the Emiperor of Austria 
went to embrace the King of Italy, in that city 
which was the finest diamond of his crown. 
But Count Apponyi and M. Thiers are too diplo- 
matic to touch on that burning question. Can 
you guess what they talked about ? China, Chi- 
nese art and Chinese women. Count Apponyi 



i6o Life in Paris. 

maintained that Chinese painters were finished 
workmen rather than artists. M. Thiers took up 
their defence with all his witty logic. "We 
must not " he said, " place ourselves at the aes- 
thetic point of view of the Greeks. The Chinese 
resemble the Greeks in nothing, neither in lines 
or color. It is perfectly natural, therefore, that 
their ideal should not be the same. Nature 
there has an entirely different aspect from Eu- 
ropean nature. In China, the trees have a fol- 
iage which seems artificial in its outlines. The 
Chinese palaces have no resemblance to the 
Parthenon. This is why an alien art appears 
false to us while it may be true, making due al- 
lowance for fancy. Fancy is merely the accent 
of art." 

They next spoke of the slenderness of Chinese 
women, and the corpulence of Chinese men. 
Why this contrast? It is because the Chinese 
have singular ideas of the beautiful. They 
like their women slim and slender, while they 
think that men ought to occupy a good deal of 
space in the world, with a fair round belly, the 
*' gilded paunch " of our ancient Farmers-Gen- 



Life in Farts. i6i 

eral. Their women, therefore, keep in a condi- 
tion of poetic leanness, while the men eat des- 
perately to give themselves an exorbitant vol- 
ume. They cannot get enough of venison 
steaks, of shark's fins, of bear's feet and swallow's 
nests. The mandarines cultivate letters, but 
they cultivate still more their stomachs. It is, 
therefore, inevitable that the grammar of art in 
China should represent only slender women and 
Falstaffian men, and naturally also the painters 
have made their gods according to the image of 
man. Their Ninifo is represented sitting on one 
of his heels, like the baboons and the orang-ou- 
tangs, with a dropsical circumference. Who 
was it said that man was made in the image of 
God ? It is man now that makes God in his own 
image. 

M. Thiers asked, with his malicious smile, if it 
were possible that such monstrosities could be 
agreeable to their women. " How do these un- 
happy women, condemned to eternal isolation, 
regard these superhuman corporosities ? Doubt- 
less the Chinaman says to his Chinawoman, ' It 

is thus that I prove my nobility.' But what 

II 



i62 Life in Paris. 

would the Chinawoman say if she could meet a 
European, graceful as an Apollo or Adonis ? 
Who knows ? Perhaps she might find him fright- 
fully lank. So true is it that nothing is absolute. 
Let us, therefore, respect this venerable paunch 
since it gains such consideration among the fair 
of China." 

The Chinese Venus was the Empress Takia. 
She set the fashon of little feet and spindle 
The. forms fashion became a law. All women 
wanted to resemble the Empress Takia, and they 
resembled her only too much. Nothing can now 
prevent the women from giving themselves up 
gayly to the martyrdom of the feet. It is not the 
Chinese who, as M. Thiers said, " take the lib- 
erty of their women by the heels." The Chinese 
poets compare the slow and painful walk of these 
poor women to the swaying of the willow, agi- 
tated by the breeze. But you cannot conceal 
such a mutilation by the flowers of poetry, or take 
from it its brutal and dishonoring character. 

We shall have in a few days the sale of every- 
thing contained in the . studio of Fortuny at 
Rome. He does not leave a cent of ready 



Life in Paris. 163 

money, but he leaves a fortune in his sketches and 
curiosities. One single Spanish-moresque vase 
will bring more than a hundred thousand francs 
It is covered with ornaments of metallic lustre. 
The lower belt is ornamented with arabesques. 
The next presents cufic characters on a ver- 
miculated ground. The third is ornamented 
with circular medallions. The fourth contains 
inscriptions in Neskhi characters on a gilded 
ground. There is a romantic story about the 
origin of this vase. Fortuny got it for 
nothing. It had been concealed in a wall, less 
on account of its beauty than because it con- 
tained a fortune in gold. Three nations already 
are quarreling over this treasure. Perhaps it 
may go to America, to your recently opened mu- 
seum. That reminds me that 1,300 years ago 
King Clovis coveted an antique vase found in 
the sack of Rheims. This marvel fell to the lot 
of a soldier of his army. The soldier, fall of his 
rights as a Sicambrian citizen, would not give 
up his precious booty to the Prince. It is to be 
remembered that Soissons was then the capital 
of France, and this took place there. The King 



164 Life in Paris. 

yielded to the right of the soldier, but later, at 
a review, he saw that this man was standing out 
of line, and that his arms were rusty. He clove 
his head asunder with a blow of his battle-axe, 
saying to him, " Remember the vase of Sois- 
sons !" 

We are marrying a good deal here. Mile. Dou- 
cet, daughter of M. Doucet of the Academy, 
gave her hand and her dowry to M. Rene Brice 
of the Assembly. She needed no dowr}^, for she 
is very beautiful and very witty, but the portion 
does no harm, especially in France. There was 
a pretty ceremony at Sainte Clotilde's, where the 
whole opera sang. The church and the opera 
get on agreeably in the 19th century. As M. 
Camille Doucet has been Director-General of the 
theatres, there were at the ceremony a great 
many actors and actresses, so that of course peo- 
ple said, " This is a fine first representa- 
tion," and the impertinence was carried so far 
as to add, " The receipts must have been good, 
for all the places were reserved." 

So many formalities are necessary in France 
to get married that many people end by not 



Life in 




r-'-^ 



'^ViOJVLlJ.ufl,,,^ 



ES7A3LI3H:d iC75, 

and America only 



necessary 



mariying at all. In Eng, 
24 hours and a happy thou 
have just returned from an 
which could never have taken p 
Frenchmen. The bridegroom arrived at Lon- 
don on Tuesday morning, coming from Chicago. 
The bride arrived there the same day from Pa- 
ris. Wednesday evening they were here, mar- 
ried since the morning. It was Miss Downing 
who married Mr. Harry Spears. She was one 
of the prettiest brides that we have lately seen. 
Paris is to lose her because she is to go to Chi- 
cago. Happily she has a sister pretty as her- 
self, who swears she will mary in Paris. Mr. and 
Mrs. Downing inhabit one of the hotels of the 
Arch of Triumph. They gave a ball on the oc- 
casion of their daughter's marriage. The house 
looked like a conservatory with its masses of flo- 
ral decoration. Mr. Washburne had a part in it, 
for I noticed his card on a marvellous bouquet. 
The house was filled with a gilded multitude. 
Entering into the saloon we saluted this travel- 
ing bride, this pretty blue bird who was about 
taking flight to build a nest at the other end of 



i\ •' 




L_ 



i66 Life in Paris. 

the world. Worth had striven emulously with na- 
ture. For so pretty a bride, an extraordinary 
dress was required. 

In the principal quadrille, Mr. Washburne 
danced with the bride, opposite the bridegroom, 
who danced with Miss Macdonald. Your Min- 
ister dances very well, always preserving the 
dignity of an Ambassador. Many distinguished 
Parisians mingled with the full representation 
of American society. Acording to the American 
custom, each one of us received a piece of 
wedding cake. The sun had replaced the gas- 
light while the bridesmaids and the groomsmen 
were still dancing, without perceiving that they 
had changed luminaries. 



Life in Pans, 167 




A. CHINESE SLANDER ON GENTLEMEN THE IDLE- 
NESS OF PRINCES THE COUNT OF PARIS AND 

HIS HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 

AN HISTORIAN PAINTER — THE THREE FESTIV- 
ITIES OF YESTERDAY PARADISE AND PARA- 
DISE LOST. 

Paris, April 25, 1875. 

N irreverent Chinese philosopher has 
said that pigs were the only true gen- 
tlemen because they did nothing. This 
Chinese philosopher had not read our books of 
heraldry, nor eaten truffles, or he would have 
seen, on the one hand, how the pig works for our 
happiness, and on the other, that gentlemen are 
the busiest people in the world, whether making 
war like Conde, or carrying away women like 
Richelieu, or working at doing nothing, like 
some others. 

But I wish seriously to defend gentlemen 
against the attack of this cynical Chinaman. It 



i68 



Life in Pans. 



is not in vain that it has been said in France, 
" Noblesse Oblige." Have you not seen, as in 
1870, how all the names of ancient France 
appeared brilliant in the advance guard ? But 
if I defend gentlemen against the charge of idle- 
ness, what shall I say of princes ? To be a 
prince nowadays is a hard trade. I do not know 
one who goes to bed before i o'clock, or who 
rises later then daybreak. To be a prince was 
easy in the fairy days, when Prince Charming 
had no other task then to wake the sleeping 
beauties. But at present a prince is a man, and 
he must be more than an ordinary man to 
remain a prince. 

Speaking only of princes of the blood-royal 
or imperial, we have seen them for a hundred 
years past, taking in their turn their degrees at 
the University of Exile, whether their names 
be Bourbon, Orleans or Napoleon. They are 
obliged to know all languages, for they cannot 
tell what will be their country of adoption. 
Some go to England, some to Germany, others 
to Holland, and others to Italy. You have had 
Bonapartes and Orleans in America. The Count 



Life in Paris. 



169 



of Paris, for instance, gained glory among you 
and made his exile illustrious. And when 
princes come home again, in the interludes 
between revolutions, they cannot fold their 
arms, whether they return to power, like Napo- 
leon III., or turn soldiers against the common 
enemy, as the Orleans did in the last invasion. 
Is there a busier man in the world then Duke 
of Aumale ? Chief of an army corps at a distance 
from Paris, he is a Parisian to the fingers' ends, 
which is a business of itself ; member of the 
French Academy, where he never misses a 
session of importance ; President of one of the 
hardest worked Councils of War, President of 
the Society of Bibliopolists, President of the 
Society for the Protection of Animals, member 
of the National Assembly, and besides all this an 
historian, as if he had too much time on his hands 
toward midnight. Certainly this man is no 
idler. 

The Count de Chambord seems to live in the 
farniente of a new Sybaris ; but do not trust to 
appearances. I do not know that he writes his- 
tory, but he writes innumerable letters. The 



170 



Life in Paris. 



number of births that he has saluted, and the num- 
ber of funeral orations that he has written for his 
adherents, would fill folios ; and each one of his 
effusions exhibits his preoccupation in regard 
to his peculiar God, his peculiar France, his pe- 
culiar flag. It is a noble heart that wastes itself 
in vain, but, from his point of view, he is no less 
a worker, because he thinks he is working for 
humanity, and has the consciousness of duty 
accomplished. 

The young Prince Imperial has worked like 
the first comer at the school of Woolwich at a 
time when a number of young men, who have no 
obligations, scatter their energies to the winds. 
His life is severe and sad ; a grave just closed, a 
weeping mother, absent friends, a broken dream, 
and a mirage in the clouds. 

The Count of Paris seemed to have led the 
way for him in this rude school of life. I remem- 
ber that in 1842 I met at the Tuileries a friend 
of his father, a celebrated Republican of that 
day, Godfrey de Cavaignac. We had become 
acquainted at Madame Corrancez's, a nervous 
woman who gave dinner parties to men of all 



Life in Paris. 171 

nations, because she liked the hubbub of ideas. 
Seeing me at a distance, he came to me and 
said : " Have you heard the news ? The Duke 
of Orleans has been killed by a fall from his 
carriage. He was a gallant fellow, but this was 
written up there by the French Republic," and 
Godfrey de Cavaignac pointed with his finger to 
heaven, like the church spire of the English poet. 
He had not much faith in God, but he had great 
faith in the Republic, and fancied that the shades 
of Robespierre, Danton, Barrere and Camille 
Desmoulins presided from above over the desti- 
nies of France. 

I was very fond of the Duke and Duchess of 
Orleans, who had been kind towards my first 
books. I said to Cavaignac that this public mis- 
fortune was all the greater if it were written on 
high because it was a promise of early revolu- 
tion. 

You know the whole story. The Duchess of 
Orleans devoted herself to her children, to make 
men of them. All France saluted this great 
misfortune with respect up to the day when the 
victors of the insurrection of 1848 refused to 



172 Life in Paris. 

recognize even that courageous mother who had 
braved all the perils of the street, to present the 
Count of Paris to the Chamber of Deputies. 
Lamartine himself was carried away by the cry, 
" It is too late." The red flag was already 
floating at the Hotel de Ville. In France, when 
the people become citizens, the princes go. 
There is more inclination to shoot them than to 
make them the first citizens of the nation. 

And this is why the Count of Paris, who also 
wastes no time, is at present one of the best his- 
torians of America, and one of the best histor- 
ians of France. I have seen him at work upon 
the third and fourth volumes of his history of 
the civil war in America. He has every right to 
make his history, because, having become by an- 
other revolution, a French citizen, he has also 
been a citizen of America. He took part in 
your war, and under his title of Prince signs, 
" Aide-de-Camp of Gen. McClellan." 

He says justly, that at a moment where labor 
and reflection are the duty of all, no page of 
military history should be neglected. He relates 
with gratitude the sympathetic welcome which 



Life in Paris. 



173 



he met in the armies of the young Republic. In 
fact, at 90 years of distance the Americans drew 
a good augury from the Frenchmen, who came 
once more to firfit with them. America recalled 
the assistance given by France to the first de- 
fender of her independence, and did not fail to 
place the name Bourbon among those who were 
to perpetuate his memory in the land. The 
Count of Paris wished to offer a tribute of recol- 
lection to his former companion in arms, but 
becoming a historian after having been a soldier, 
in spite of his legitimate preference for the cause 
which he served, he has forced himself to preserve 
in his narrative the strictest impartiality. He 
will soon finish this book, which has so many 
points of interest for you. It is animated by a 
rigid sentiment of truth. He is never carried 
away by passion. He knows that history is a 
severe Muse, who can only be right by restrain- 
ing her heart. His style is like his thought, 
a stream confined in its bed, which neither 
tears away its banks, nor leaves its limits on 
stormy days. It flows to the sea in its ma- 
jestic simplicity, without waves, and without tu- 



174 Life in Paris. 

mult, reflecting both the clouds and the a2ure of 
the sky. The Prince follows events, and nar- 
rates them without too much commentary, but 
not without mingling them with philosophic ideas 
and humane sentiments. He is a good painter, 
without overloading his pallet with color. Some 
of his pages, like that of his arrival at Washing- 
ton, are perfect pictures, which might be signed 
by Meissonier, or any other of our battle paint- 
ers. For instance : " While the two hostile arm- 
ies observed each other bet^veen Arlington 
and Fairfax Court House, a balloon was sent 
up every evening to reconnoitre the surrounding 
country. It was the only means of getting 
sight of the enem3\ As soon as we rose above 
the primeval trees which surrounded the former 
residence of Gen. Lee, the view extended over 
an undulating country', covered with trees, dotted 
here and there by little clearings, and bordered 
on the west by the long range of the Blue Ridge 
which recalls the first lines of the Jura. Thanks 
to the brilliant light which illumines the last 
hours of an Autumn day in America, the ob- 
sen^er could distinguish the slightest details of the 



Life in Paris. 



175 



country which appeared below us like a map in 
relief. But in vain does the eye seek the appar- 
ent signs of war. Peace and tranquillity seem 
to reign everywhere. The greatest attention is 
necessary to discover the recent clearings, at the 
edge of which a line of reddish earth marks the 
new fortifications. However, as the day declines, 
we see to the south little blueish lines of smoke, 
rising gently above the trees. They multiply by 
groups and form a vast semicircle. It is the 
Confederates cooking their supper. You may 
almost count the roll of their army, for every 
smoke betrays the kettle of a half section. 
Farther off, the steam of a locomotive flying 
towards the mountain, traces by a line drawn 
through the forests the railroad which brings 
the enemy their provisions. At the same mo- 
ment a strain of military music is heard below 
the balloon. All the clearings where we 
sought in vain to discover the Federal camp, 
are filled by a throng coming out of the wood 
that surrounds them. This throng arranges 
itself, and forms in battalions. The music 
passes in front of the ranks with that peculiar 



176 Life in Paris. 

march which the English call the 'goose-step.' 
Each battalion has two flags, one with the 
National colors, and the other with its number 
and the arms of its State. These flags are 
dipped, the officers salute, the Colonel takes 
command, and, a moment after, all the soldiers 
disperse j for it is not an alarm nor a pre- 
lude of a march forward which has brought 
them thus together, but the regular evening 
parade." 

Is not this a picture from the hand of a 
master ? Many like it I could set before you, 
but the book is too well known in America for 
me to make further extracts. Rivarol said, 
"The word is the clothing of the thought, and 
the expression is its armor." The Count of 
Paris finds both word and expression so naturally 
that he seems never to have searched for it. 
Rivarol said, also, that the writer can ga^n 
recruits among soldiers, and that the general can 
never gain recruits among writers. As a rule, 
therefore, all the generals are becoming writers. 
In times of peace the sword turns to a pen in 
their hands. 



Life in Paris. 



177 



Yesterday there was a princely fete at the 
house of a brother of the Count of Paris, the 
Duke of Chartres, a Turkish fete at the Embassy, 
and an American fete at Mr. Stebbins's. The 
guests were about the same at each, so that the 
same people were meeting everywhere. For 
instance, I saw three times one of your Generals, 
Gen. Sickles, his handsome wife, and his pretty 
daughter. When one bears the insignia of 
beauty, like these two ladies, and the insignia 
of bravery, like Gen. Sickles, one cannot be 
seen too often, being escorted everywhere by 
universal sympathy. At the Turkish Embassy 
I heard a word which did not fall on deaf ears. 
A young woman was there who had dissappeared 
from the world to mourn in a convent over the 
sins of her husband, as it was given out, but 
who also might have devoted a little time to 
mourning over her own, a lady usually called 
" the honeymoon woman." Virtue is like beauty 
— ^you cannot see where it begins or where it 
ends. 

^* I did not think," said an evil tongue, " that 

Madame A. B. C. would indulge herself in the 

12 



178 



Life in Paris. 



luxury of a convent before making her re-entry 
in the world." A still more evil tongue answered^ 
" What would you have ? A woman would not 
care to go to Paradise except for the pleasure 
of descending to Paradise Lost." 




Life in Paris. 179 



THE ART OF LIVING lOO YEARS COUNT WALDECK 

FONTENELLE AND FLOURENS AN IRRE- 
SISTIBLE AT 83 ^A TOAST AT MADAME LOPEZ' 

AN EPITAPH RECREATIONS OF A CENTEN- 
ARIAN SALON OF 1875 INITIALS OF GENIUS. 

Paris, May 2, 1875. 




]0 you ever take the trouble to live 100 
years in America? In Europe there 
are always a few obstinate fellows who 
persistently refuse to be buried. M. de Fonte- 
nelle of illustrious memory, who always had his 
hands full of truths, and took good care not to 
open them ; whose eminently French wit was free 
from any taint of the Gaulish, — M. Fontenelle, 
in short, died a few hours before completing his 
hundredth year. When imbeciles asked him his 
age he would say, " Hush ! Death has forgotten 
me!" 

But Fontenelle has been left far behind. People 
in society in Paris received yesterday the follow- 
ing notice : 



I So Life in Paris. 

" You are requested to assist at the funeral of 
M. Jean Frederick Maximilian Count Waldeck, 
officer of the Order of Genius and Merit of 
Venezuela, honorary member of the London 
Athenaeum, member of the Geographical Society 
of Paris, member of the American Society of 
Archaeology, Honorary Vice-President of the 
Universal Alliance, and author of several works, 
who has died in his iioth year, furnished with 
the sacraments of the church at his house, No. 
74 Rue des Martyrs." 

Since Count Waldeck, who had been success 
ively page of Marie Antoinette, soldier of the 
Republic and of the Empire, prisoner of Canni 
bals, ranger in virgin forests, explorer of American 
ruins, three times shipwrecked, left for dead in a 
duel, smitten by fevers of all colors — white, yel- 
low, green, and blue ; married, also, when 83 
years of age, — since he had neglected so many 
chances of dying, one cannot help asking how 
he came to die ? M. Flourens, who occupied in 
the Academy the seat of M. de Fontenelle, was 
himself ambitious to live a hundred years. It 
was he who invented "the third youth," beginning 



Life in Paris. 18 1 

at 60 years, which we call " St. Martin's Summer." 
He published a learned book to prove that a man 
never dies, but commits suicide, whatever his 
age may be. Count Waldeck, therefore, must 
have killed himself, for he had no more reason 
to die this spring than last spring. On the con- 
trary, he felt himself in better trim. Death seized 
him, pencil in hand. On the fatal day, he rose 
as usual at 5 o'clock in the morning. He said 
that he had ten years of work on hand, and did 
not wish to lose an hour. 

I met him some ten years ago. The minister 
had asked me if his archaeological discoveries 
were serious. I went, as Inspector-General of 
Fine Arts, to see this monument of another age. 
I found that this page of Marie Antoinette still 
possessed all the impetuosity of the French 
Guard. I lost sight of him afterwards ; but a 
month ago I met him again at dinner at the house 
of a charming and eccentric Irishwoman, known 
here under the name of the Marechale Lopez. 
I had Count Waldeck in front of me ; I sat be- 
tween his wife and his son. As this young gen- 
tleman was about 24 years old, I supposed that 



1 82 Life in Paris. 

it was a step-son, and scarcely knew on what 
ground I was standing while chatting with his 
wife, an English lady of great beauty and dis- 
tinction. At last I took the bull by the horns. 
"Madame," I said, "you made a heroic sacrifice 
in devoting yourself to this gallant gentleman of 
another century." 

"No," she said, "he is not of my century, foi 
we feted his hundredth birthday nine years ago ; 
but he is of my age, because I love him." 

"I never doubted, Madame, your love for M. 
de Waldeck. I love him too, as one would love 
the eighth wonder of the world." 

" I understand you, sir ; but I love him as a 
woman loves her husband. I do not count his 
years. I have trouble in believing that he is 109, 
and I am only 42." 

" Pardon the curiosity of a philosopher whose 
study is woman. Permit me to place an interro- 
gation point before your heart. Did you love 
him at Z-^ because he was a gentleman in spirit 
as well as birth, or did you love him from love ? " 

"I loved him from love. I was at that time 
somewhat in demand. If among all my suitors. 



Life in Faris, 183 

I chose Count Waldeck, it was because I found 
him the most irresistible." Here is something 
to console those who are entering M. Flourens' 
" Third Youth." 

" And why, Madame, was he the most irresist- 
ible ? " 

" Because he was the youngest. He was not 
80 years of age. He was 20 four times over." 

At this moment Count Waldeck rose, took 
with a firm hand a glass of champagne, and im- 
provised a pretty stanza in honor of Madame 
Lopez. After which he emptied his glass at a 
breath, without winking. When it was empty he 
turned it upside down on the hand of the Mare- 
chale, and kissed away the last pearly drop. 

"That," he said, "is what we did at the court 
of Louis XVI." 

Nothing could have been more gallant and 
gentlemanlike. 

I proposed a toast in my turn to this living 
history of a century, to this man who had seen 
and judged everything. After dinner we had a 
long conversation. He spoke of the future as of 
the past, as if he had only gone half way as yet. 



184 Life in Paris. 

He talked of doing this and doing that. " And 
still how much," he said, "must be left unfin- 
ished." He related unpublished witticisms of 
Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. He said he 
was present when Rivarol, after the taking of the 
Bastile, was summoned by the King, who wanted 
every one's advice. " Sire," said Rivarol, " my 
advice is very simple. If you wish to remain 
King of France, act the King ! " 

Louis XVI. did not act the King, and instead 
of mounting his throne again he mounted the 
scaffold. 

This was the last time that Count Waldeck 
dined out. After that memorable evening he 
never again left his apartment — on a fifth floor 
in the Rue des Martyrs — until he left it yester- 
day for eternity. To-day, all the old men are 
out of patience with him, and are accusing him 
of having been criminally imprudent. They pro- 
pose as an epitaph to be engraved on his tomb- 
stone, " Here lies one who died at a hundred and 
ten for having lived too fast." 

His wife is in despair — noble woman and brave 
heart. But after all, since she married the 



Life in Paris. 



i8S 



Eighteenth Century, perhaps she will console 
herself by marrying the Twentieth. 

This singular man lived solitary and deserted. 
The government which supported him did it very 
ill. Historians preferred to ransack libraries 
rather than this voluminous life. Savans rushed 
to observe the transit of Venus, but did not care 
to take the trouble to go to the Rue des Martyrs 
to study these no years living together. Yet 
Count Waldeck always was cheery and present- 
able. He was born at Prague, in the autumn of 
1766. He began as a page to Marie Antoinette. 
But the court of Louis XVI. was a prison to that 
adventurous spirit. He went to travelling over 
the world at a time when one did not travel fast. 
He returned to Paris, and entered the studio of 
David, which he left for the studio of Prud'hon. 
But the smell of powder turned his head. We 
find him at the siege of Toulon, and in the cam- 
paign of Italy. He went with the French army 
to Egypt. But he refused to be included in the 
capitulation. He, with four other officers, re- 
solved to escape through Africa. He crossed 
with them the desert of Dongola, where his com- 



t86 Life in Paris, 

panions were eaten. He was reserved for dessert, 
but melted the hearts of his captors with opera 
airs. One would have thought that he would be 
ready to return to his studio ; but he embarked 
for Chili with the Portuguese. He was for a 
long time a resident of South America, a devoted 
archaeologist, digging everywhere, and discover- 
ing important monuments which prove that 
America has also her antiquity. He made no 
money in all these adventures. He went to 
London, afterwards to Paris, inventing a new 
trade which was almost an art — the art of touch- 
ing up old engravings or etchings. Marc Antonys 
or Rembrandts. He gave them back their fresh- 
ness and brilliancy by force of incredible patience. 
This turbulent man resigned himself to passing 
twelve hours a day over an old print retracing 
by the aid of a microscope all its worn outlines 
with a crow's quill. It was wonderful, how out 
of a three-franc print he would restore a 3000- 
franc masterpiece. There are few celebrated 
collections which do not contain engravings re- 
touched by Count Waldeck. He tried painting, 
but his pictures were never worth his prints, be- 



Life m Paris. 



187 



cause there was nothing to retouch. He exposed 
ten years ago two pictures which were much re- 
marked, because he had inscribed on the frames 
these words, beyond the reach of most artists, 
" Recreations of a Centenarian." 

Since we are talking about pictures, let us 
look in a moment at the Salon. Naturally as 
it is a first representation we find ourselves in 
excellent company. All the queens of fashion 
are there distracting attention from the fashion- 
able painters. The question is which makes the 
best figure. In passing I salute the lovely 
Marquise Anforti, and ask if her portrait is at 
the Salon. " Never," she replies, " who could 
paint me as well as I do myself ? " *' I know," 
I replied, " that you deserve the first prize of 
painting, but there are at least four painters who 
are worthy of making your portrait, Cabanel, 
Carolus Duran, Cot, and Verhas." 

"Very well. I will engage all four for next 
year, but do not say anything about it ; for they 
ought not to know there are four hands in the 
game. I will send the three first to the Exposi- 
tion under three assumed names and you will 



i88 Life in Paris. 

see that there is no resemblance amongst them. 
You swear secrecy ? " 

I swore, and I ask your help to keep the 
secret. 

The Exposition of 1875 contains the farewells 
of Corot ; three admirable landscapes, " The 
Woodman," " Pleasures of Evening," and a 
Scriptural scene. He has the profound senti- 
ment for nature which Leonardo da Vinci had 
for the human face. It is the infinite in the 
obscure. One must view his work with the eyes 
of the soul. 

The Palace of Fine Arts is divided into 24 
halls by the 24 letters of the alphabet. The 
letter A will only detain us by a fine figure of 
Alma Tadema, " Painting ; " great character and 
elevation, true individuality of color and de- 
sign. In the room B, a fine Bible piece by a 
foreigner, " Rizpah Guarding her Children ; " 
A Holy Family of Bouguereau, not so strong in 
color as in feeling; a magnificent peasant scene 
of Jules Breton, " The Feast of St. John ; " one 
of the three fine portraits of the Salon by Bou- 
nat, the portrait of Madame Pasca, an actress 






Life m Paris. 189 

who has just returned from Russia, who will be 
in six months our greatest actress. In the room 
C, I have already spoken of Corot. Cabanel 
comes next with his three portraits more or less 
like, Venus, Tamar, and an anonymous Baroness ; 
Carolus Duran with his " End of Summer," a 
wonderful piece of poetry for which he refuses 
50,000 francs ; then Chaplin with his " Broken 
Lyre " and " May Roses," different tone, but 
none the less charming. The portraits of Cot 
are marked with great distinction. He seems to 
have lived only with Duchesses. You will meet 
Manon Lescaut in America, for I see her here 
embarking with the rest of the girls in a picture 
of M. Delort. Let us not leave the C's without 
taking a breath in these landscapes of Cesar de 
Kock. To-day the leading initial in art is C. 
David used to say in speaking of his pupils, " All 
are marked with the initial of Genius." They 
were named Gros, Girodet, Gerard, Guerin, and 
Gericault. We still have our Gerome, but that 
is about all, except Giacometti and Girard. 

Passing on to M, we find the famous Manet 
among the vines of Argenteuil. Manet would 



190 Life ill Paris. 

have been glad to be Fortuny, but Fortuny would 
never have consented to be Manet. And yet I 
like this original painter better than all the dried 
fruit of the Roman school. Here is Mazerolles 
with his decorative panels ; the Hungarian Mun- 
cascy with his " Village Heroes," and Matedko 
with a " Baptism of Bells at Cracow ; " Muller 
with the " Madness of Lear \ " Maillard with 
"Achilles and Thetis." A smell of powder 
attracts us into the next room, where we find two 
admirable battle-pieces of M. de Neuville. After 
these master works we must pause before the 
" Spring " of Parrot, a " Fisher's Family," by 
Puvis de Chavannes, " A Bather," by Perrault, 
an adorable portrait of Mile. Chanzy de Pomay- 
rac. Here is a " Norman Cabaret," by Ribot, 
which smells more of wine than of cider ; " The 
Ant and the Grasshopper " by Vivert, " The 
Broken Pitcher," by Verhas. 

This ends the alphabet. Verhas is a Flemish 
painter who now sells his pictures to the English 
at his own prices. Ten years ago I was walking in 
a by-street in Paris. I asked the price of a little 
picture in a window representing a young woman 



Life in Paris. 



191 



weeping and kissing a little dog. Her lover 
was gone but her dog remained and she called 
him Fidele — a hackneyed subject certainly. I 
do not like that sort of thing, but the painting 
was very pretty. " How much ? " I asked. 
" Fifty francs." How can a man of talent sell 
such pictures at such a price? Send it to me." 
The next day my valet, who always cripples a 
name when he can, announced M. Feroce. It 
was Verhas. I said, "I owe you 500 francs for 
your picture." " No," he replied, I choose to 
sell it at 50." "Don't insist," I said j "I make 
a good bargain at that — the picture is worth 
1000 francs." 

Feroce remained five years with me painting 
ceilings and portraits. He was " faithful " as 
the dog he had painted, but the laziest fellow in 
the world. Now he has his own house in Brus- 
sels, but is as lazy as ever. He gets up as late 
to earn his 300 francs a day as he did formerly 
to earn three francs. 



L. 




192 Life in Paris, 



THE EXPOSITION OF 1875 PROUDHON AN ES- 
CAPED LUNATIC THE RESULTS OF PHILOSOPHY 

SOCIALSIT PRINCIPLES MARRIAGE AND DI- 
VORCE SOCRATES AND XANTIPPE. 

Paris, May 9, 1875. 

N connection with the Exposition of 
1875, which gives rise to so many- 
absurd paradoxes about Art, its 
aims and its destinies, I remember a book of 
the apostle Proudhon, an unfortunate philosopher 
who must not be confounded with our admirable 
Neo-Grecian, Peter Paul Prud'hon, the painter 
of poets and the poet of painters. 

It is hard to conceive follies that have been 
uttered by the philosopher Proudhon under the 
pretext that philosophy is akin to wisdom. He 
wrote 400 pages entitled " The Principle of Art." 
Can you imagine what is the principle of this 
celebrated cloud-collector ? It is simply that Art 
should be suppressed. But Plato invented that 
before him. It is true that sagacious spirits who 
go to the bottom of things say that though Plato 



Life in Paris. 193 

banished artists from his Republic, it was be- 
cause they would have been miserable there ; a 
fraternal idea, as you see, because Plato was the 
first artist in eloquence of his time. 

Victor Hugo said in 1850, " Do you know 
what the Socialists would do if they could ? 
They would tear down the Vendome Column to 
make pennies of it." In his book on Art Proud- 
hon does not conceal his profession of faith. 
Listen : " I would give the Museum of the 
Louvre, the Tuileries, Notre Dame, and the 
Column into the bargain, to be lodged at home 
in a little house which I should occupy by my- 
self, in the centre of an enclosure of a thousand 
yards, where I might have water, shade, grass, 
and silence." It was for this, then, that he made 
such a disturbance, this inheritor of the pride of 
J. J. Rousseau. If this little house is his ideal, 
what becomes of his famous thesis, " Property is 
theft ? " Contradiction of contradictions. The 
ideal of Proudhon in Art is a little house where 
he shall live all alone ; and he adds that he shall 
take care to put in it no statues nor pictures. 
Now, who hindered him from having this little 

13 



194 Life in Paris. 

house ? In his country that would not have cost 
much. Armand Barthet, the author of " Lesbia's 
Sparrow," wiser than the philosopher because 
he was a poet, bought himself a little house there 
for three or four thousand francs. But ever}--- 
body knows that the citizen Proudhon, who was 
for ever singing the joys of silence, would only 
live in a continual row. 

You cannot imagine what stupidities this book 
of Proudhon contains. Here is another, " Art 
has done nothing for the Greeks, the Italians, 
the Spaniards. We must measure the degree 
of abasement among a people by the exaggera- 
tion of its works of art. It has been the secret 
of priests and despots to cheat the poverty of 
the masses by the prestige of monuments. 
Could the Eg}^ptian complain while he saw 
rising around him those obelisks, those sphinxes, 
those pyramids, those gigantic temples 1 When 
Art seizes upon the Greeks they are lost. The 
Romans call them only Grecillons as the Belgians 
call us FraiicequiUo?is. As soon as the great 
monuments begin to rise in Rome nothing is 
left but corruption and degeneracy." 



Life in Paris. 195 

You think perhaps that this escaped lunatic 
could go no further in the domain of Art. 
Then read these lines : " Would to God that 
Luther had e.iterminated the Raphaels, the Mi- 
chael Angelos, and all their rivals, all those dec- 
orators of palaces and churches, natural allies 
of priesthood and despotism against the liber- 
ty of the people, ministers of corruption, pro- 
fessors of pleasure, the agents of luxury ; it is 
they who have taught the people to endure 
their ignominy and their indigence by the con- 
templation of their achievements." Proudhon 
does not stop there ; he further says to the 
artists that through them we have found means 
to live in proud pauperism. He rages against 
glory, having enjoyed nothing but notoriety. 
" Glory ! " he says ; " this is our daily bread — 
the daily bread of vain and cowardly races who, 
after shining for a moment in the front rank, 
become the derision of nations." The motive 
of all this wrath in a book which ought to pre- 
serve always the sentiment of dignity, since Art 
is the school of the beautiful and the good, is 
that in Proudhon's opinion, his gossip Courbet 



196 Life in Pafis. 

is not yet recognized as the first painter of the 
Nineteenth Century. 

To Proudhon what are De la Croix and In- 
gres, those masters of colors and design, those 
fine intelligences controlled by the religion of 
Art ? They are nothing but slaves of despot- 
ism and virtuosos of the priesthood. In like 
manner, we French are nothing but France- 
quillons, since the Belgians, from the height of 
their dignity have said so. Doubtless Proud- 
hon thought that the Belgians (I do not speak 
of Rubens, who is universal) surpassed us by 
their little pictures. Yet Louis XIV. royally 
said, looking at some Teniers, " Take these 
frightful clowns away." This meant "I like 
only grand art." 

At page 374 of his book Proudhon declares 
that the marvels predicted by Fourier will one 
day be realized. " The true monuments of the 
Republic in contradistinction to those of the 
Empire will be in the convenience, the salubrity, 
and the cheapness of its habitations." M. 
Proudhon, you came into the world poor. You 
have said that property is theft because you had 



Life in Paris. 197 

not the courage to buy the three acres of Plato. 
You have regarded the beauties of nature with- 
out understanding them, and hence you have 
decreed the uselessness of God. You have re- 
garded the masterpieces of Art with an eye of 
envy that you could not possess them or imitate 
them, and you have decreed the uselessness of 
Art. Wishing to be famous, you would burn the 
Alexandrian library. You may be consoled in your 
tomb, since your gossip Courbet has overthrown 
the Vendome Column, and your friends, the 
Socialists, have burned the library of the Louvre. 
You need not be afraid that any one will ever 
take the trouble to burn your book. If your 
congeners ever come to power they may, accord- 
ing to your wish, burn Homer and Raphael, the 
Vatican and Notre Dame de Paris, everything 
grand or beautiful which remains on earth. But 
I am sorry for you, M. Proudhon. They can 
burn neither the blue sky nor the golden stars. 
The sun will still light up their folly, and the 
roses and the nightingales, those poems of the 
greatest of Artists, will laugh to scorn eternally 
the man who would try to suppress poetry in the 



198 Life in Paris. 

world. It was an earlier Proudhon who said to 
the nightingale, " Ugly beast ? I cannot sleep 
for your chattering." 

Fortunately nobody reads Proudhon, and we 
still go to the exhibitions of pictures as people 
went in the morning of Art. It is now 200 years 
since France began to enjoy this spectacle, as 
the first exhibition took place in 1673. In spite 
of the fact that M. Courbet no longer exhibits, 
people still go to meditate or laugh at the devel- 
opments of French painting. Whatever M. 
Proudhon may say, it is better to attend this 
school than his. Painting and sculpture should 
be our best books now that we have no longer 
time to read. They have this advantage, that 
they speak to every one, and that their eloquence 
is immediate. You must spend a long time at 
college to understand Virgil ; you must be initia- 
ted before you can comprehend Beethoven ; but 
any one with eyes needs only remain an hour be- 
fore Michael Angelo or Raphael, even if he cannot 
read, to attain feelings of the beautiful and the true. 
Poets and musicians address the elect j sculptors 
and painters hold plenar}^ court for ail who see. 



Life in Paris. 199 

Would you believe it ? Even in this festival 
time of nature there still are fetes in society, but 
it is the extreme unction of the winter's pleasures. 
Madame Ratazzi, who has allowed her portrait 
and that of Ratazzi to be exhibited at the Palace 
of the Champs Elysees — a third-rate picture 
where the husband and wife seem to be waiting 
for a prize of virtue — is to give, on Saturday, a 
ball by daylight, in her house in the Avenue de 
rimperatrice. It will be called a Festival of 
Flowers ; unfortunately there will be too many 
faded bouquets. All this week has been filled 
with cotillons of the well-known sort. In the 
American society, pretty women who think them- 
selves still prettier when their dresses drag out 
of sight j in the official world, faces dark with 
ridiculous gravity ; in the Parisian world, beauty, 
ribbons, and deviltry. 

There are always a great many marriages here, 
and a great many separations. Madeleine 
Brohan said of one of her friends, " I shall not 
believe she is married until I hear of her separa- 
tion." It was another actress who wrote this 
famous note : " Monsieur, you ask my hand. 



200 Life in Paris, 

What for ? I am not so silly as to marry a man 
who has the folly to wish to marry me. Let us 
not join hands, but shake hands." In France 
they say the separation is a sufficient remedy for 
marriage. Some desire divorce so as to marry 
again ; but most people say that one marriage is 
a plenty. We have a prince in Paris who re- 
paired his fortune by marrying with a bank, and 
who was recently on the point of sending his 
wife back to his father-in-law. But he contented 
himself by sending him, as a first warning, a 
telegraphic dispatch containing this sentiment 
from Socrates : " Marriage is honey and aloes. 
How comes it that the woman wastes the honey 
till nothing remains on her lips and those of her 
husband but the bitterness of the aloes .? " Al- 
though the father-in-law, one of our richest 
financiers, was well convinced that he had not 
given a Xantippe to the prince, and although 
he was not very strong in Greek, he understood 
this translation of Socrates. He answered his 
heraldic son-in-law by a dispatch that he had 
made for him 300,000 francs in the recent panic 
at the Bourse. This greatly sweetened the bitter- 



Life in Paris. 201 

ness of the aloes. The financier consoles him- 
self for the scandal by the magic phrase, " Our 
daughter, the princess." 

Mires also wanted his daughter to be prin- 
cess. He gave several millions for that pur- 
pose to Prince Polignac. Where did he get 
them ? Almost everywhere ; of me, for instance, 
exactly as if he had picked my pocket. When I 
said to Princess Polignac, " Do you pay your 
father's debts ? " she burst into a loud laugh. 
These princes who marry bankers' dowries are 
not worth much ; but these princesses are worth 
still less. But bad blood will tell. 

Speaking of panics, I mentioned the fortune 
made by my friend Georges de Heeckeren. He 
made four millions in four weeks. He has just 
lost them in two. But he had the time to give 
away money by the handful to all his needy 
friends. This, at least, still is his. 



..J 



2 02 Life in Paris. 




THE ACADEMY DUEL LEMOINNE AND PARADOL 

THE ACADEMY A POLITICAL INSTITUTION 

THE TWO DUMAS AN EXOTIC PRINCESS 

ELOISE AND ABELARD A RADICAL ARCHITECT. 

Paris, June i6, 1875. 

HERE has just been a duel at the 
Academy. People said, even in the 
eighteenth century, " The French 
Academy is an illustrious company where they 
receive men of the sword, men of the church, 
men of the law, men of the world — and even 
men of letters." At present the Academy is an 
illustrious company where they receive nothing 
but politicians. Therefore, before the duel of 
which I am speaking, the Academy had given 
the chair of Jules Janin to M. John Lemoinne, 
an editor of the yownal des Z>ebats, a courte- 
ous gentleman, who will recall under the cupola 
of the Institute, the appearance and the wit of 
Prevost-Paradol, who was Minister of France 
among you. Rivarol, who was not an Academi- 



Life in Paris. 203 

cian, said, " To be one of the Forty, you must 
have done nothing ; " but he added, " You must 
not carry this too far." M. John Lemoinne has 
made no books, but he has fought valiantly 
against darkness and prejudice. I give him my 
vote. My son, who is also an editor of the 
Debats, assures me that he was the only candi- 
date worthy of the chair. This is what is called 
preaching for one's saint. But for the chair of 
M. Guizot, there was a real duel in four combats. 
On the one side the Republic, on the other the 
Empire and Orleanism ; M. Jules Simon, for- 
merly Minister of Public Instruction under the 
Governments of the 4th September, and of M. 
Thiers, and M. Dumas, Perpetual Secretary of 
the Academy of Sciences and Senator of the 
Empire. The struggle was very hot. Each re- 
quired only one vote to pass to the Immortality 
of the Quarantaine. If M. Dumas had not had 
Alexandre Dumas against him, he would have 
been safe enough ; but the author of " The 
Demi Monde " thought that there were enough 
Dumas' there already. The duel is postponed 
for six months. About that time — ^for things do 



204 Life in Paris. 

not go rapidly at the Academy — M. Lemoinne 
will have had his green embroidered coat made. 
People will say, of course " L'habit ne fait pas 
Lemoinne." His rivals have already said that 
he had better put on a harlequin's coat to repre- 
sent the different opinions which he has de- 
fended. 

For six months to come I shall not say another 
word about the Academy, but I will soon send 
you the twelfth edition of my history of " The 
Forty-first Chair." The forty-first chair, ren- 
dered illustrious by Descartes, Pascal, Moliere, 
J. J. Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, Le Sage, 
Balzac, and Theophile Gautier, is the only one 
I desire. I have never taken a step towards 
any of the others, though it has been mistakenly 
said that I have been a candidate. 

The salons soon will close. Mme. Ratazzi 
gave to-day a fete which was called Venetienne, 
because there was nothing like Venice about it 
— no gondolas, no doges, no dogaresses. The 
water of the lagoons was advantageously re- 
placed by champagne. The enjoyment seemed 
to be endless, for it began at noon, and at mid- 



Life in Paris. 205 

night, while I write, the tableaus are still in pro- 
gress. It is not everybody that is gay in France. 
A good many are thoughtful, and disquieted 
about the digestion of M. de Bismarck. War 
has spread over us lately its great vengeful 
shadow, but it was nothing but shadow. 

There are salons in Parisian society where 
there is no dancing, but where there is an end- 
less gratification of all the curiosities of the 
heart and the mind. There has recently been 
a good deal of talk about an exotic Princess 
who has held hospitable court in the Champs 
Elysees. I will not tell you of the country of 
this great lady ; she may be a Russian or Walla- 
chian or Italian. She is so fantastic that public 
opinion has no existence for her ; she laughs it 
out of countenance. She and a friend of hers, 
also a little too fanciful, live together in a circle 
of women, something too witty, who make a 
joke of everything. Men are apt to imagine 
that a woman who laughs is disarmed. It is 
just the other way. Mockery is the best armor 
against love. What ruins women is aspiration, 
revery, sentimentality. A woman who never 



2o6 Life in Paris, 

laughs is half lost, if she is not defended by the 
cradle of her children. To know something of 
this, it would only be necessary to visit this 
Princess, who, although a bird of passage, is 
far more Parisian than most of the bourgeoises 
who were born in Paris. You could not count 
the number of fops entrapped in that hornet's 
nest of the Princess's salon. Her receptions are 
twice a day — at four o'clock, before starting for 
the Bois, and at midnight, after returning from 
the opera, or the balls of the evening. After 
being bored everywhere else, people go there to 
spend a pleasant half hour. The snobs and the 
imbeciles, who are always found together, but who 
are not necessarily of the same ways, are not per- 
manent at this house. She makes no objections 
to receiving them, knowing they will never take 
root. It is amusing to see them go. It is a 
comedy to watch a swell of feeble mind who 
wants to go home and dares not ; who beats his 
brains for a witty word, and does not find it ; 
who drops at the same moment his silly remark 
and his crush hat ; who backs against a closed 
door and misses an open one. 



Life in Paris. 207 

The Duke de Morny, Leon Gozlan and I, once 
tried to put this comedy on the stage at the 
Fran§ais. We called it " Madame's Mondays." 
M. Fould, the Minister of State, did not approve 
it. He hated Morny, and interdicted the piece. 
We had a gay revenge. M. Fould went driving 
with the Emperor the day before his dismissal 
from the Ministry. So we framed a couplet, 
which stated that " Yesterday M. Fould was 
driven out in company with the Emperor, and 
to-day he was driven out by himself." 

All Paris passes through the salons of the 
Princess, but her circle remains essentially the 
same, because the new-comers rarely return. 
There is plenty of wit ; " too much of it," one 
of the Forty said one day ; " it is scattered so 
liberally that you think it paste until you find it 
is diamonds." The Princess answered: "Never 
mind ! Throw as many stones as you please in 
my garden. But let them be precious stones." 

Plato banished poets from his republic, and 
the Princess banishes politicians from hers. She 
says that politics, which were invented' to ar- 
range everything, derange everything ; that with 



L 



2o8 Life in Paris. 

their pretext of humanity they only exist by 
virtue of scaffolds, pillage, and conflagrations. 
Her programme for the happiness of the people 
is not voluminous : " God up there, a sergeant 
and four gendarmes down here." Girardin, 
who is one of her friends, gave in his adhesion 
to this constitution on condition that it be ex- 
tended to half a stickful. 

I shall not tell you all the charming absurdi- 
ties invented by these ladies. They are very 
engaging, from their beauty and their lack of 
prudery. One is tempted to gild friendship 
with the rays of love. " Go on," they seem to 
say. But when you have come into the depths 
of the forest they leave you there, with a per- 
fectly feminine cruelty, wounded to death per- 
haps with a blow from a fan. And how can 
you avoid being caught, when you are at first 
accompanied with such luxurious abandon ? 
When your songs of love are listened to, and sweet 
voices join in the refrain ? When they march with 
even step beside you towards the enchanted cas- 
tle, without warning you that the castle will bury 
you under the laughter of mocking fairies "i 



Life in Paris. 209 

The River du Tendre has long been famous. 
The Princess and her friends are neither Pre- 
cieuses nor ridiculous. They speak the pictur- 
esque and vivid French of the modern grammar. 
They live like other people, without aiming to be 
either prudes or blue-stockings. You dine well 
at the Princess's; witty as she is, she never sub- 
stitutes an anecdote for the roast, like Mme. de 
Maintenon, who got her education in a bourgeois 
kitchen. 

We have, as you know, at Pere la Chaise the 
tomb of Abelard and Heloise, which is an 
eternal shrine for lovers, and those who love 
the Past. It was proposed to restore this tomb, 
which was not originally made to contain the 
remains of these historic lovers, because it was 
formed from the ruins of a chapel at St. Denis. 
But as they were about to vote a credit of 13,000 
francs for this purpose, M. Viollet-Leduc, now a 
radical municipal councillor, cried out: "What is 
the use ? It is a spurious monument." This is 
not the sentiment of a true architect. Why 
should we allow the destruction of the relics of 
a consecrated chapel, whose style has been ap- 

14 



2IO Life in Paris. 

predated by the world ? If it is not the true 
grave of H^loise and Abelard, it is at least a 
page of the history of art. The radical architect 
said also, " This chapel is a mystification. The 
people ought not to be deceived." To-morrow 
he may say that Notre Dame de Paris, his dear 
Notre Dame of other days, when he believed in 
the Virgin, is a mystification, and ought to go to 
ruin. For Heaven's sake let us leave architects 
to their architecture, and not make politicians of 
them. It was an artist also, M. Courbet, who 
decreed the fall of the Vendome Column. It 
fell, but the national sentiment quickly raised it 
again. M. VioUet-Leduc wants the statue of 
Heloise destroyed because it does not represent 
H^loise. How does he know that? And what 
does it matter, since for a century past that 
statute has been revered as one of the most 
touching of legendary figures .'' 

While M. Viollet-Leduc turns politician I 
shall turn architect. I am going to rebuild in 
the Avenue du Roi de Rome the palace of 
Queen Isabel of Spain ; I shall take out no 
commission for the purpose, however, except 



Life in Paris. 211 

that of Her Majesty, who is a woman of the 
best taste. 

I will end with two amiable speeches of our 
ladies of the theatre. Madame Plessis, of the 
French Comedy, famous for forty years, has a 
wrinkle, nothing more than a crease in a rose- 
leaf, but, after all, it is a crease. Her not less 
famous friend, Madeleine Brohan, who has the 
advantage of a fame of only twenty years' 
standing, has recently quarrelled with her. At 
some disobliging innovation of the elder actress, 
Madame Brohan said the other day, "That is 
a new wrinkle, and it does not become you ! " 

This is the other amenity. You know the 
phenomenal thinness of Mile. Sarah Bernhardt. 
She was talking with Mile. Croizette, a maid-ser- 
vant of Moliere, who would make a dozen of 
her, and said she would like to go to America, 
like Rachel, if she were not afraid of ship- 
wreck. 

" Do not fear," said her fat friend, " You 
would be your own plank of safety." 



212 Life in Paris. 




A FUTURE SENATOR ALPHONSE ESQUIROS — POET 

AND POLITICIAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH 

WORKING THE ORACLE LEGITIMISM THE SLEEP- 
ING BEAUTY WHO IS PRINCE CHARMING ? 

Paris, May 23, 1875. 

E deplore our friends laid away in the 
grave, but we forget those who are 
still above ground. For instance, 
this morning I saw pass by with a deep feeling of 
sadness the jDale faces of Theophile Gautier, 
Gerard de Nerval and Jules Janin, when a 
servant announced Alphonse Esquiros, another 
friend of my youth, whom I had not seen since 
the last revolution. The fame of Alphonse 
Esquiros must have passed the ocean in prose 
and verse. At present he is a Deputy of the 
people. When we first met at Victor Hugo's he 
was a romantic poet. He began with a collection 
of odes and sonnets, entitled "The Swallows." 
The name gives an idea of the dreams of 
poets. Do not they, like the swallows, forever 
seek the Spring ? Do they not journey wherever 



Life in Paris. 213 

the light invites them — the h'ght which is the 
image of absolute and eternal beauty ? There 
were admirable verses in this first collection, but 
the one most remarked was this : 

** The moon a silver crown, the sun a louis d'or." 

This line went over the world chiming the glory 

*of the young poet, as a good verse doubtless 

would not have done. Has not a philosopher 

said that we are better known by our vices than 

our virtues ? 

Alphonse Esquiros belonged to our early 
Bohemia, the gilded Bohemia. He left it to go 
into politics, but often regretted that he could 
not share our truancy. It was at this time that 
he wrote in the Revue des Deux Mondes his fine 
studies of Paris, less true, it may be, but more 
philosophical then those of M. Maxime du Camp. 
It was the time when Lamartine was publish- 
ing "The Girondists," and Esquiros published 
" the Montagnards" with all the audacity of a 
Danton. In 1848 also he threw himself with 
enthusiasm into the most reckless extravagances. 
It so happened that one day he was condemned 



214 Life in Paris. 

to death by default. He had taken refuge with 
me. Victor Hugo and Ledru Rollin warned 
him not to show his head at the window. Although 
the cage was a gilded one, the Swallow could not 
help going out. I foresaw that he would be 
caught some day in the net of a court-martial, 
which would not act by default. I knew that 
the public prosecutor, Col. Hennezel, was one • 
of my habitual readers. I went straight to him. 
"I will deliver Esquiros to you," I said, "on 
condition that you will abandon the charges 
against him." "Abandon the charges," said the 
Colonel, "I would rather stop reading you." I 
bowed. " Think, " I said, " Esquiros is one of 
the most gallant fellows in the world. What has 
got him into trouble is his love for humanity. 
You ought not to shoot such hearts." We were 
smoking our cigars. We were from the same 
country ; we had hunted together, and we had 
taken part in theatricals at a chateau of the 
Soissonnais. "Besides, my dear Colonel," I 
said, " Esquiros is going to expatriate himself, and 
we shall thus lose a man of talent." " We shall 
not let him go." " But he has shaved his beard, 



Life in Pans. 215 

you would never know him." " I know where 
he is." "Where?" " At your house." "Why 
don't you take him, then ?" " Because he is at 
your house — if he were with a demagogue it 
would soon be done." 

I saw that the case must go into court and ar- 
ranged with the prosecutor to retain a friend of 
his, Nogeat St. Laurent, with no other fee except 
the honor and glory of saving the life of a politi- 
cian. The charges were not to be abandoned at 
once, but the prosecutor would admit extenuating 
circumstances. I went home, and taking Esquiros 
by the arm I conducted him to the military pris- 
on. It was a bitter moment when I saw him go 
down to his cell and heard the heavy iron gate 
close behind him. I began to believe that Vic- 
tor Hugo and Ledru Rollin were right in advising 
him to remain concealed. In those troubled 
times who could answer for the court ? 

" Let me say one more word to the prisoner," I 
said to the turnkey. He opened the grating 
again. I threw myself into the arms of Esquiros. 
"You shall be saved," I cried, and hurried away 
to the President of the court-martial, Gen. 



L 



2i6 Life in Paris. 

Cornemuse, a singular name for such a mission. 
Soldiers are usually good fellows whose hearts 
are ever on duty. This one did not want to lis- 
ten to me. But he gave me a cigar and ended 
by making me stay to breakfast. I never break- 
fasted more joyously, for I felt that I had gained 
my case. And in fact a week later Esquiros ap- 
peared before the court-martial. I was in the 
crowd and the President sent a gensdarmes to 
bring me to sit beside him. But all was not 
yet over. They examined Esquiros. Instead 
of being prudent in his answers, he went to de- 
veloping his theories a la St. Just. " What is a 
man? Nothing. What is a principle ? Every- 
thing." They might perfectly easily have con- 
demned him to death by the same argument. 
" What is a principle ? Everything. What is a man .' 
Nothing." They wanted not to convict him, but 
it was hard work. The prosecutor had abandon- 
ed his accusations, but the prisoner accused him- 
self. I was in a fever. When he was acquitted 
everybody was astounded, except the officers of 
the court-martial. 

Do you know what was the first word of Esqui- 



Life in Paris, 217 

ros in embracing me ? " Vive la Repuhlique! they 
dared not condemn my ideas." Since that great 
day the life of Esquiros has been agitated. He 
was elected representative of the people at Paris 
up to the 2d of December, day of deliverance ac- 
cording to some, day of oppression according to 
others. Of course Esquiros appeared at the 
barricades, where he was willing to die for his 
ideas. He was proscribed. He wandered in 
Belgium, in Holland, in England, where he al- 
most became an English citizen, having been 
appointed at London Inspector of High Schools. 
From Holland, and from England, he sent to 
the Revue des Deitx Mondes admirable letters on 
the institutions and manners of these two coun- 
tries. He is still a sort of Englishman, although 
a representative of the French people, and glad- 
ly crosses the Channel at every Parliamentary 
recess. 

There is nothing but fortune and misfortune in 
this world. Esquiros had an ill-natured wife in 
Paris, who did not think proper to go abroad with 
him after the coup d'etat. Therefore, Esquiros 
thought proper to marry, in Belgium, another wife, 



2i8 Life in Paris. 

a beautiful and noble creature, a living model of 
virtue, resignation, and devotion. Although the 
other one is still living, it is the latter, the wife of 
exile, who is called Madame Esquiros. 

I was just now speaking of St. Just. Esquiros 
is St. Just in 1875. I saved Esquiros, although 
he was not of my opinion. I am not sure that 
Esquiros would not have had me shot if I had been 
taken in arms against his ideas. Like the terrible 
Conventionnel, he has a head at once gentle and 
proud; a head like an antique marble, where 
meditation reigns. If men return after their death, 
there is no doubt that St. Just is to-day called 
Esquiros. Both began with poetry, to end with 
politics. Both desired to make France over in 
the image of Sparta. I will tell you one word of 
Esquiros which will give you an idea of the 
simplicity of the man. It was at his first 
marriage, where I assisted as best man. We had 
more fine phrases than ortolans for supper. At 
1 1 o'clock Esquiros remembered that he always 
went to bed before midnight. He said adieu to 
all of us, even his wife. Yes, he said adieu to his 
wife as to the others. She cried out, " Adieu ? 



Life in Paris. 219 

What does that mean ? " "I am going to bed." 
" Going to bed ?" " Yes, I am going to bed at my 
mother's." 

That morning Esquiros had brought me his 
new book, with this dedication : 

To Arsene Houssaye : Amicus amico, f rater 
fratri. Alphonse Esquiros. 

This book is called " Le Bonhomme Jadis." 
For him this " Goodman Formerly " is an old 
fool who has never done any good. He con- 
demns pitilessly all the past of France. He 
recalls the fairy tale of Perrault, " The Sleeping 
Beauty." He says that this princess, who was 
wounded in the hand by touching a wheel, and 
who went to sleep for a hundred years resembles 
the Legitimacy which is now reviving. " How 
are you, Princess ? " "I am perfectly well." 
" You have slept very long." " What are you 
saying ? I went to sleep last night, and I wake 
up this morning." " Does your Grace desire 
anything .? " " Call my women ! I wish to put 
on my dress of spider webs trimmed with love." 
" I must inform you. Princess, that all your 
toilettes are dreadfully out of fashion." " You 



22 o Life in Paris. 

do not know what you are saying. They are in 
the latest style and come from Paris." "Yes, 
from the Paris of a hundred years ago." " Shall 
I dress my hair in the peacock or the hedge-hog 
style .^" "Those st}'les are no longer worn." 
" Throw over my hair a little cloud of powder." 
"Powder is no longer put on the hair." "Just 
now we were playing at Pharaoh." "That 
game is no longer played." " This evening 
we will dance a minuet." " Nothing is danced 
now but the can-can." "Then I shall go to 
Paris, quick ! my carriage ! " " You only travel 
now by railroad." " You are mad. I shall 
write to my mother." " We communicate with 
our friends only by telegraph." " WHiere are 
my vassals?" "There are no vassals." "Is 
there news of the king ? " " There are no 
more kings." " What are they doing at Ver- 
sailles ? " " Making the laws of the Republic." 
"Why this is the end of the world." "Yes, 
it is the end of the world that you have known." 
" Give me a pillow, I am going to sleep again." 
Thus Esquiors buries the Goodman Formerly, 
and after the epitaph, he calls to mind that a 



Life in Pa7'is. 221 

poet, of the Great Republic, Longfellow, has 
taken for his device the Latin word Excelsior, 
" higher, alwa3'S higher." Every, one who has 
crossed a chain of mountains knows that after one 
summit is reached, other loftier heights declare 
themselves above the solid mass of rock. To 
these heights others succeed. Who is it that will 
scale the ultimate peak? 

This is an image of the ascending march of 
societies. Higher than the programmes of '89, 
higher than the traditions of philosophy, higher 
than the eighteenth century, higher than the 
ideal of all the ancient political assemblies. 
Nevertheless, sufficient to each day is its trouble. 
Let us first attain these two sacred summits, the 
Republic and Liberty ; future generations will 
take care of the rest. To them the office of ex- 
ploring the infinite ; to us the austere duty of 
opening the approach to the mountain, and of 
transmitting to successors the device " Excel- 
sior." 

An old Indian poem, the Ramayana, narrates 
how Vishnu, concealed under the form of a 
dwarf, asked of Bali, an evil god, the permission 



22 2 Life in Paris. 

to measure the earth in three steps. Blinded as 
he was by the sentiment of his own strength, the 
proud Bali answered laughingly, " Let him tr}\" 
But as soon as the dwarf had obtained that fa- 
vor, he swelled into a prodigious giant form. 
With the first step he passed over the earth, 
with the second the zone of the air, wdth the 
third all the heavens of stars. " This," says 
Esquiros, " is the history of the people and of 
the human race. Grant it three steps, and it 
will be master of the earth. It will measure 
the stars floating above its head. It will seize 
upon the universe of ideas. Its enemies know this 
well, and therefore have they bound and stran- 
gled it for centuries. But to-day it is too late. 
The first step was taken in '89, and after this 
gigantic stride there is no going backwards. 
Height and space are opened. The human spirit 
mounts and will mount forever, ' Excelsior.' " 

In this upward flight Esquiros counts no falls. 
The route of the human spirit is a dangerous one. 
The great Pascal saw the abyss always before 
him. Politicians do not see it often enough. 
Joseph de Maistre said, " The earth is quaking 



Life in Paris. 223 

and you want to build." When the earth quakes 
and one must build, it is best to take Heaven as 
a foundation. 

Esquiros, who during the war governed the 
departments of the South, is to be elected Senator 
in the Bouches du Rhone. But what will he do 
in the Senate ? The hour of his ideas has not yet 
struck. Esquiros now never appears in the 
tribune. Why .'* He has a sovereign eloquence, 
a learned and vivid speech, and boldness of 
expression. But so far as ideas are concerned, 
compared with him Gambetta is reactionary. He 
lives at Versailles in front of the park of Louis 
XIV., but he never enters it. As he is unfor- 
giving towards the past, he is not willing that 
the past should give him hospitality, even the hos- 
pitality of its shadows. He said to me, " There 
is nothing but upas trees in that park. If I 
passed through it, I should be poisoned." 



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